Protein in the urine can cause serious illness. However, minimal amount of protein is pretty normal to find in a person’s urine.
When your kidneys filter the urine from the blood, it retains the protein in it. However, protein can be present in the urine due to an acute inflammation, a kidney stone disease, or worse, a sign of kidney damage. If you have an acute inflammation that can be caused by UTI or urinary tract infection, the urine can have an increase in protein or what is called nonspecific protein.
On the other hand, the more serious concern of having protein in the urine would be because of a damaged kidney or kidney failure. In some cases, conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, and intrinsic diseases of the kidneys are what lead to kidneys becoming leaky and thus slipping protein to the urine. You may determine if your kidneys get leaky by using a urine dipstick test. However, results will be more accurate if you collect several samples of urine for 24 hours. Let’s talk this disease in greater detail including what causes protein in urine.
The high amount of protein found in the urine is what we call the proteinuria. Protein is normal in the blood. However in the urine, it can cause us diseases which can be serious. In the blood, the protein helps in coagulation, balancing body fluids, and at the same time fighting infections same as the immunoglobulin and albumin. Thus, protein provides crucial functions in our blood stream. On the other hand, our kidneys function is to filter the wastes from the protein-rich blood through its multitude of filtering screens that we call the glomeruli. The wastes transform to urine while the protein is retained in the kidney or in the blood. If you have a healthy kidney, proteins normally don’t go with the urine simply because proteins are too big to pass the glomeruli.
To know if you have proteinuria, as mentioned above, make use of a routine urine test with a dipstick. Symptoms don’t usually show until it’s too very late. If there is already a very high amount of protein in the urine, you can develop a condition called the nephritic syndrome which causes water to develop in several parts of your body. You’ll notice swelling in the ankles, hands, around the eyes, tummy, and you’ll notice foamy urine and experience breathlessness because of having water surrounding your lungs.
The possible causes of pretineuria may be the following:
- High blood pressure
- Infection
- Reflux nephropathy
- Diabetes
- Glomerulonephritis
- Minimal change nephritis