Having received a sheet with a printout of a biochemical blood test, you can find the urea indicator in it. "What it is?" - the patients ask the question.
Modern hemisphere analyzers that perform a blood test and automatically calculate the results also indicate whether this indicator is increased or decreased. It is not surprising that the discovery of formidable inscriptions that there are any changes scares people. “My urea is lowered or elevated in my blood. What is it and what does it threaten me with? ” - Such questions sound in the therapist’s office and are driven into the browser search bar. Let's try to figure this out.
What kind of substance: urea
From the point of view of chemistry, it is a diamide of carbonic acid. In humans and animals, this substance is one of the end products of the breakdown of protein molecules. Complex proteins break down to simple, then comes the turn of the second. As a result, the body receives the amino acids that make up the protein molecules. And after the splitting of the latter, a toxic substance is formed - ammonia. It is brought by blood flow to the liver, where urea is formed from it through several biochemical reactions. What it is is now clear.
Why do we measure blood urea?
What happens next with this substance? For nothing, it is not used in the body and must be completely removed from the body. It is excreted from the body through the kidneys with urine.
Thus, for a doctor performing a biochemical blood test, urea, or rather, its quantity, is an indicator of assessing the quality of the kidneys and their functional ability. You can also indirectly examine the function of the liver, which synthesizes these organic molecules. Here for what purposes the line “urea” is present on the blood test sheet. What is it, and why do doctors determine how much it is in our body, we figured out. Now it’s worth talking about what the deviations of its blood values from normal mean.
The significance of changes in the content of this substance
Increased blood urea is observed with:
- errors in diet (high protein intake);
- increased physical activity and diseases with the breakdown of proteins (tumors, severe chronic ailments, endocrine disorders);
- diseases of the kidneys, heart, blood vessels (pyelonephritis, glomerulonephritis, amyloidosis, heart failure, renal vascular anomalies).
A decrease in blood urea occurs when:
- Vegetarianism (low protein intake);
- liver damage (hepatitis, cirrhosis, neoplasms);
- intestinal diseases with impaired digestion of proteins and absorption of amino acids (inflammation, postoperative conditions, parasitic lesions);
- diseases of the pancreas, accompanied by a decrease in the release of enzymes (pancreatitis).
In general, it became clear that the urea indicator is used to evaluate kidney and liver functions, but even if there is a deviation from the norm in the blood, you should not panic. It is necessary to study the amount of urea in the urine, and also pay attention to assessing other indicators of the work of these internal organs.