THE CHEMICAL COMPONENT OF URINE SPECIMENS OF SOME UYO CITY POLYTECHNIC STUDENTS

THE CHEMICAL COMPONENT OF URINE SPECIMENS OF SOME UYO CITY POLYTECHNIC STUDENTS

CHAPTER ONE

• INTRODUCTION

Generally, approximately 15L of plasma are purified each day by glomerular filtration, tubular secretion, and tubular re-absorption to produce 0.6 to 2.L of urine. The amount of urine produced is influenced by environmental temperature, fluid intake, time of day, emotional and many other factors (Agarwal, Panasar and Lewis, 2002).

The composition of urine reveals much about body function. Metabolic waste products such as carbon dioxide, urea, uric acid, creatinine, and have no particular pathological significance. The presence of albumin (a protein), glucose, ketones and various other substances, however, may indicate malfunction of the kidneys or some other organ of the body. In the analysis of a urine sample, for many of the tests, a test strip method is usually employed which utilizes                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             specially prepared reagent test strips. These convenient test strip are designed primarily for patient used. The larger clinical laboratory generally used other methods for reasons of economy.

The discussion of the normal constituents of urine provides a series of tests to detect the presence of abnormal substances. Students often perform the tests on their own urine sample. (Arinzon, Peisakh, Shuval, Shabat and Berner, 2008).

NORMAL CONSTITUENTS OF URINE

Normal urine is actually a highly complex aqueous solution of organic and inorganic substances. The majority of the constituent are either waste product derived directly from certain foods that are eaten. The total amount of solids in a 24 hour urine sample averages around 60g of this total, 35g are inorganic.

The most important organic substances are urea, uric acid and creatinine, urea is a product formed by the liver, for ammonia and carbon dioxide. Ninety five percent (95%) of nitrogen content of urine is in the formed of this substance. Urine acid is an end-product of the oxidation of purines in the body. By weight, there is normally about 60 times as much urea as uric acid in urine. Creatinine is a hydrate form of creatinine. There may be twice as much creatinine as uric acid is the urine.

The principal inorganic constituents of urine are chloride, phosphates, and ammonia, sodium chloride is the predominant chloride and make up about half of the organic substances since ammonia is toxic to the body and lacking in plasma, there is very little of it normally present in fresh urine. Urine that is allowed to stand at room temperature for 24 hours or longer may give off an odor of ammonia due to the breakdown or urea by bacteria action (Marks, 1991).

ABNORMAL CONSTITUENTS OF URINE

In determining whether pathological conditions exist through urine analysis, it is necessary to perform both physical and chemical tests, of the physical tests that are available only appearance of the urine will be observed. The chemical tests will be for pH, protein, glucose, ketones and haemoglobin. The significance of each abnormality will accompany the specific test (Tortra and Grabowsk, 2003).

• STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS

Uyo City Polytechnic serves as a gateway for students who are not booked. It does not provide all primary health care services which are normally provided at federal polytechnics and states. The department of health service in the school is experiencing a several shortage of both medical and nursing personnel. A few number of students are seen in schools daily as a result therefore the screening for chemical component of urine has been skip out on a prescription basis, the reason behind this decision is that it takes time.

In the past two years, the school overran its budget by a substantial amount. The provincial department of health did not allocate more fund to the institution to cover the budget. As a result of this, the school has instituted measures to try and save cost. This measures including reducing the number of investigation and test that are ordered and performed in Uyo City Polytechnic by health care professional. The cost of testing the chemical component of urine is both in terms of money and time.

1.2   AIM OF THE STUDY

The main purpose of this study is to determine the chemical component of urine specimens of some Uyo City Polytechnic students.

1.3   OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

        To achieve the above aim, the objectives of the study are:-

1. to determine components of urine (i.e. blood, protein, glucose etc) that shows chemically.
2. to determine the prevalence of urine abnormality in some students and

3      to determine the association of chemical component of urine with regard to males and females