Are you sure about the health of your kidneys?

In medical terms: "the kidneys are a paired organ, the main purpose of which is to purify the blood and remove metabolic products from the body." In other words, the kidneys are the filter of our body, when passing through which the blood is purified and urine is formed, with it such human waste products as urea, creatinine, ketone bodies, amino acids, as well as glucose and a little protein are excreted from the body. All these substances play a certain role in the vital activity of the body, but today we will talk about the protein in the urine – how it got there, and what it can say. 

From a school biology course, you may remember the definition: "Life is a form of existence of protein bodies." We will not argue about the correctness of this definition, we only recognize that proteins are essential components of all living organisms and play an important role in the vital activity of cells, for example, they participate in the "construction" of bones and muscles, protect against infections, determine the amount of fluid in the bloodstream and perform a huge variety of other functions. Blood is no exception, and its liquid part (plasma) contains proteins. When blood passes through the kidneys, excess fluid and waste products of the body are removed, while other important nutrients and proteins remain in the blood. If there are any disorders in the kidneys, and their filtration ability is impaired, then more protein gets into the urine than normal - this phenomenon is called proteinuria.

Proteinuria may be one of the early signs of kidney disease. How can you find out if you have kidney problems? One of the obvious signs of kidney dysfunction is edema, which is located mainly in the upper part of the trunk, on the eyelids, around the eyes. However, renal edema does not appear immediately, but only with pronounced disorders, at the beginning, kidney disease can be completely asymptomatic for a long time. You may not even realize that you have kidney pathology until the problem becomes so obvious that it will be impossible not to notice it. The easiest way to diagnose kidney disease in the early stages is laboratory diagnostics. An elementary determination of protein in urine will help in the identification of many kidney diseases at the stage when there are no symptoms yet, but the violation already exists.

It is worth noting that this analysis is especially important for pregnant women, because during pregnancy the load on the genitourinary system doubles, so the kidneys become extremely vulnerable. Increased protein content is a common occurrence during this period, it signals kidney overload, and most importantly, it may be the first symptom of preeclampsia. Preeclampsia is a late toxicosis of pregnant women, a phenomenon characterized by a triad of symptoms: high blood pressure, proteinuria, edema. It is dangerous because eclampsia can develop after it - a deadly phenomenon in which blood pressure reaches such a high level that the life of the mother and child is in danger. And protein in the urine can be an early sign of this complication and will help identify and take the necessary measures to avoid the threat.

So, protein in urine is a clinical and laboratory sign of kidney damage, used for the timely diagnosis of their diseases. And as with any other disease, the earlier the disease is diagnosed, the easier and more effective it is to treat. Protein in urine is also detected by its general test, however, the general analysis is not so effective in this case, and it is preferable to perform a biochemical analysis to quantify protein in urine.

You can check the health of your kidneys by passing a biochemical test for the quantitative determination of protein in urine, by passing an analysis in any treatment room of the OLYMP CDL branches, of which there are more than 180 in Kazakhstan.