Therefore, solely using urine color as an estimate of proper or improper specific gravity is bound to mislead you at one point or another. Now, the urine may be essentially clear-colored if you’ve had too much water to drink, but in this case, the specific gravity may or may not be within the normal range. Decreased Urine Specific GravityĬontrarily, USG can be abnormally low as opposed to abnormally high, resulting in clear-colored urine. This is a condition where excessive antidiuretic hormone (aka vasopressin), a hormone that promotes water retention, causes USG to increase. This activates an important system, called the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, which then forces the kidneys to reabsorb as much water back into circulation as possible, resulting in very concentrated urine.Furthermore, diabetes mellitus can cause higher-than-normal specific gravity as a result of increased levels of glucose being excreted into the urine, thereby increasing urine concentration.Finally, SIADH, or syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion, can also cause elevated specific gravity. This tricks the kidneys to (most likely) erroneously believe there’s not enough fluid in the vasculature to maintain blood pressure. Since the blood isn’t pumping blood properly in this case, the kidneys don’t get enough blood delivered to them. This leaves less water per amount of solute being excreted by the kidneys, thereby raising specific gravity.Another cause of higher-than-normal specific gravity includes congestive heart failure. In these cases, the kidneys do everything they can to reabsorb as much water as possible back into circulation in order to maintain blood pressure. So, water has a specific gravity of 1.000, but because urine is mainly water with some additional stuff like electrolytes dissolved within it, thereby increasing its density compared to pure water, USG can never be less than 1.Īs a rough guide here, if you’ve ever had dark-colored urine, it’s probably because your urine was denser or more concentrated, thereby increasing urine specific gravity.The causes for a higher-than-normal specific gravity include:Dehydration, which may be a result of improper fluid intake or loss due to vomiting or diarrhea. This test is comparing the density of urine to the density of distilled water, the latter of which is set at 1.000. In fact, sugar can actually sometimes be found in urine, as per the famous disease called diabetes mellitus.īe that as it may, normal urine specific gravity, more quickly abbreviated as USG or SG, is approximately 1. this point, you should be wondering where in the world these numbers came from. For example, sugar becomes a solute when dissolved in water. Solutes, in case you didn’t know, are substances that are dissolved within something. This test is known as urine specific gravity, and it is a test that measures the concentration of solutes in the urine. It’s important that you learn that even seemingly normal-looking urine, in terms of its color, may sometimes actually hide a big problem that can be diagnosed with a specific test we’re going to go over. * All Partners were chosen among 50+ writing services by our Customer Satisfaction Team
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