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Urine is made up of urea, water, sodium, potassium, and various other compounds. For a long time, many people, influenced by survival shows, and even medical professionals, thought urine was free from germs. However, it turns out that urine is not sterile when it exits the body.
A study published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology examined urine samples from both healthy women and women with an overactive bladder. The study confirmed that even healthy women had live bacteria in their bladders and urine. In the past, when bacteria showed up in a patient’s sample, doctors often considered it indicative of a urinary tract infection, though they set a cut-off at 100,000 colony-forming units per milliliter of urine for a positive result. This isn’t the first time researchers have disproven the idea of urine being germ-free.
The belief that urine is sterile stemmed from the notion that, under standard laboratory testing, urine samples from healthy individuals wouldn’t show enough bacterial growth to be deemed significant. It was assumed that any bacteria found had come from skin or other non-sterile surfaces, which led to the establishment of the aforementioned cut-off point.
In a follow-up study presented to the American Society for Microbiology, the same researchers took urine samples from 84 women and incubated them under both more favorable conditions and standard lab procedures. The results showed that over 70 percent of the samples had bacteria present, while in the standard testing, 90 percent of these bacteria were previously reported as “no growth,” revealing the limitations of the traditional approach.
The research further revealed that the bacteria inhabiting the bladders of women with an overactive bladder were not only different but also more varied than those found in healthy women. The researchers suggested that these bacteria act similarly to those in the gut, and that an imbalance in the normal flora could contribute to the symptoms of an overactive bladder. This discovery has the potential to change how medical professionals and scientists approach research on preventing and treating bladder conditions like UTIs and incontinence, as noted in a paper published in European Urology by one of the researchers.
Image by El Caganer.
