Urine test instead of blood

Urine test instead of blood

Scientists have developed a new way to detect disease markers, which will soon make it possible in many cases to replace blood tests with urine tests.

This is reported in the journal Proteomics - Clinical Applications.

The authors of the unique technology were employees of Clemson University (South Carolina, USA).

Many diseases can be diagnosed by the final protein biological products, traces of which are contained in urine. This way, it is possible to detect transplant rejection, some heart diseases, infections, etc. But today, these protein molecules in urine are not easy to catch, because they contain a significant amount of salts.

The creator of the new technology, Kenneth Marcus, a professor of analytical chemistry, explains: “You basically have seawater in which you have to look for traces of the desired proteins. The concentration of these proteins can reach one part per billion.”

The new test is based on a material called capillary-channel polymer fibers, or C-CP. C-CP fibers help extract minute amounts of proteins from urine.

Proteins adhere to C-CP fibers

The scientists described in detail how they carried out the analysis. They first placed C-CP fibers in plastic tubes and then passed urine samples through them, centrifuging them for 30 seconds. The tubes were then rinsed with deionized water to remove any remaining salts or other contaminants.

Because the proteins bound strongly to C-CP, they remained in the tubes, were solvent extracted, and were subjected to further mass spectrometric analysis.

Thanks to such a simple and ingenious technology, scientists were able to analyze 12 samples within 5 minutes. They say that this is far from the limit - much depended on the capabilities of the centrifuge they used.

Fast, accurate and cheap method

Current methods for purifying proteins before analysis on a mass spectrometer, according to Professor Marcus, are seriously inferior to C-CP fibers, which make analysis faster, more accurate and much cheaper.

Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology Youhe Gao from Beijing Normal University in China says that the development of his American colleagues is impressive: “It’s amazing. Simply because the potential of studying urine is much greater than many researchers realize. Urine accumulates all the changes that occur in the body and can serve as an even better source of biomarkers than blood because various processes in our body limit changes in the blood. In addition, urine is the easiest biological fluid to obtain for analysis.”

Professor Marcus emphasizes that one of the main advantages of his method will be the ease of testing in young children, for whom in many cases it will now be possible to replace painful and traumatic blood sampling with a simple urine collection. If current methods require tens of milliliters of urine, then even a few microliters are sufficient for the new analysis.

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