How to Diagnose Disease From Your Pet's Urine
The most easily obtained and most underestimated body fluid for diagnosing diseases in animals is urine. This article outlines some important things you can find out with urine sticks and common sense.
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Things You'll Need
- Urine collection vessels (metal trays)
- Urine clinistix (measures 8 different parameters)
Instructions
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Collect urine from your animal in metal tray. The easiest way to do this is by free catch as he/she is relieving him/herself. Another way, to be done only if you have experience in it, or can learn it from a veterinary technician, is to squeeze the bladder, particularly in cats. (If you squeeze too hard, you can rupture the bladder.)
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Put drops of urine on all of the spots on the clinistick. Leave on for a minute, then wash, though some manufacturers have different instructions. Get readings of protein, glucose, USG (urinary specific gravity, though if you can do this with a refractometer it would be better), ketones, leukocytes and blood.
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Evaluating urine is an art as well as a science, but some easily obtained information can clue you in that something is wrong. Examples include:
a. Glucose in urine usually means that there is diabetes.
b. Ketone bodies in urine (breakdown product of fats if glucose not available or muscles breaking down) usually indicates advancing diabetes or general breakdown of body condition.
c. Leukocytes indicates bladder infection or advanced kidney infection.
d. Blood in urine usually indicates bladder infection or advanced kidney damage.
e. USG of 1.012 or less indicates that animal is not concentrating urine as it should, something that happens in diabetes and many other diseases.
f. Small amounts of protein in urine that has a high specific gravity (above 1.020) means nothing. Protein in urine that doesn't have high USG indicates loss of protein from blood into the urine, an indication of kidney disease most often. -
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If any of the above abnormalities happen, see a veterinarian and do follow up blood work, taking into account physical symptoms as well.
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Tips & Warnings
Urine is sterile (unless it is infected) and it is very useful as a biological tool in diagnosis.
Keep urine in a vial in refrigerator until you are ready to use it, then let it warm to room temperature. It is best to analyze urine when it first is obtained.
Urine sticks should not be exposed to light or excess heat or used past their expiration date.
