What might it mean if you found a high concentration of urobilinogen in your patient's urine? (Hint: Consider the source of urobilinogen.) (Connects to Chapter 19)

Video transcript

Hi, everybody. Welcome back. The next question says, which of the following conditions could lead to elevated urobilinogen in the urine? A hypertension B, osteoporosis, C hypothyroidism or D sickle cell anemia. Well, the way to think through this is to recall, where does your bonogen come from? And the answer is, it's a product of the breakdown of Billy Rubin and bilirubin. We can recall is a product of a breakdown of red blood cells. So there will always be a little bit of gen in the urine since your blood cells, the ones that get too old or broken down. But if there's an elevated level, it means something is causing an increased rate of breakdown of red blood cells. So let's look at our conditions and think which one or more than one there might be is involved and would cause increased breakdown of red blood cells. And that leads to the only one here that involves blood, which is choice d sickle cell anemia and sele cell anemia. You have those abnormally shaped red blood cells due to the defect in the hemoglobin protein. And as a result, those red blood cells have a decreased lifespan So with a shorter lifespan, you would see increased breakdown and therefore elevated gen. Let's look at our other answer. Choices. Just briefly hypertension. Choice A is of course elevated blood pressure. Now, over time, this can damage the kidney and then the kidney might have problems filtering out various compounds and cause issues with something like elevated ural ingen. But that would be a very remote connection. Just plain high blood pressure is not going to directly cause this elevated gen level. So choice a not our answer. Tras v osteoporosis is that condition of weakened bones. Of course, that's primarily an effect on the skeletal system and won't have a direct effect on these levels. And then choice C. So we'll cross out B hypothyroidism is a condition where the thyroid isn't making enough thyroid hormone. And while this can have various health effects, again, it won't be a direct cause of what we're seeing here. So all three answers A B and C are wrong because they are not a direct cause of that elevated bilirubin urbino saying totally the wrong word there in the urine. So the condition that would lead to this is choice d sickle cell anemia. Hope to see you in the next video.