Urine Study Reveals Over 3,000 Compounds

With all the poking, prodding,  blood-letting, and oceans of urine taken from me in the past 2 weeks, I

found this article interesting. I mean, who'd thunk it?

And yes, I really, really and truly need a holiday.

Looking for an encyclopedia of pee? Scientists have laid out the entire chemical composition of human urine, revealing that more than 3,000 compounds are found in the fluid, and have published it all in an online database.
In the study, which took seven years to complete, the researchers found that at least 3,079 compounds can be detected in urine. Seventy-two of these compounds are made by bacteria, while 1,453 come from the body itself. Another 2,282 come from diet, drugs, cosmetics or environmental exposure (some compounds belong to more than one group).
"Urine is an incredibly complex biofluid. We had no idea there could be so many different compounds going into our toilets," said study researcher David Wishart, professor of biology and computing science at the University of Alberta. [Pee Rainbow: From Red to Indigo, What Urine Colors Mean]
The complete list of all metabolites that can be detected in human urine using current technologies has been placed into an online public database called the Urine Metabolome Database.The word metabolome refers to the complete collection of metabolites, which are the products of metabolism and include hormones, vitamins and other molecules.
A favorite among fluids"Urine has long been a 'favored' biofluid among metabolomics researchers," because it is sterile and can be obtained easily in large volumes, the scientists wrote in their study published Wednesday (Sept. 4) in the journal PLOS ONE.
However, the chemical complexity of urine has made it a difficult substance to fully understand, the researchers said. As a biological waste material, urine typically contains metabolic breakdown products from a wide range of foods, drinks, drugs, environmental contaminants, waste metabolites of the body and bacterial by-products.
Compared to other body fluids such as saliva or cerebrospinal fluid, urine contains about five to 10 times more compounds, and shows a larger chemical diversity, the researchers found. The compounds found in human urine fall into 230 different chemical classes.
"Given that there are only 356 chemical classes in the entire human metabolome, this certainly demonstrates the enormous chemical diversity found in urine," the researchers said.
The researchers also found that more than 480 compounds in urine were not previously reported to be in blood, contrary to the long-standing idea that the collection of chemicals in urine is a subset of compounds found in the blood.

Be sure to click on the link above [Pee Rainbow] for another fascinating glimpse into the world of Urine.  The rest of this story (with more links) is HERE

More later, if I'm able.

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