Pee diagnostics

In the Middle Ages, physicians used the appearance of a patients' urine as a key diagnostic:

— During the Middle Ages, when anatomy studies were rare and very few postmortem examinations were done, urine was one of the few diagnostic tools available

— One textbook listed 20 possible colours

— Belief in urine analysis began in the late classical era, around AD500, and lasted unchallenged into the Renaissance, when doctors were at last permitted to dissect bodies

Now the Times Online (which also provided the list above) reports on the diagnostic potential of studying the metabolites in urine via spectroscopy (a high-tech version of peering at pee):

A [research] team . . . has completed the first worldwide study of the metabolites (breakdown products) that are found in urine, reflecting the diet, inheritance and the lifestyle of the people from whom it came. They call such studies “metabolomics” by analogy with genomics, which looks at all the genes that make up the human species, and proteomics, which does the same for proteins.

The study used nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to compare racial and national groups by the composition of their urine. From Japan, Beijing, Corpus Christi, Belfast and West Bromwich, urine differs in subtle ways that could provide a powerful new way of linking diet and health.The metabolites they found come from microbes in the gut, from diet and from the metabolism of the host.

The team believes that the research may provide the basis for a “metabolome-wide association” approach to help to understand interactions between lifestyles, environment and genes and how they determine diseases.

The manuscript illumination is from a thirteenth century Oxford text by Hunayn ibn Ishaq al-'Ibadi, 809?-873 (known as Joannitius) called Isagoge Johannitii in Tegni Galeni. It shows "A physician with a flask of urine, possibly comparing it to pictures or descriptions of variously colored urine in a book." From the National Library of Medicine. Hat tip to Unlocked Wordhoard.

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