Now, a Simple Urine Test to Detect Blood Clots in Your Body

Blood clots are often risky and tricky to diagnose. Sometimes such clots can cause life-threatening conditions like strokes and heart attacks. Recently, scientists have developed a simple urine test to detect dangerous blood clots.

One of the researchers who is of Indian-origin, Sangeeta N Bhatia, lead author and PhD candidate Kevin Lin and postdoctoral fellow Gabriel Kwong have described the results of the urine test on laboratory mice.

Blood clots are made up of fibrin proteins and platelets and more often, are a positive condition. They form a plug that stops bleeding after an injury. But sometimes, clogs form when they are not really needed. It may happen when a person sits for too long and develops “deep-vein thrombosis”. In such a case, a clot is formed in the leg that blocks the blood flow and causes leg pain.

This clot can get displaced from its original position and move throughout the body. If the blood clot reaches the heart or the brain, it can block blood flow there aggravating the situation to the extent of death.

Current clinical trials aren’t reliable when it comes to diagnosing thrombosis or a blood clot. This reason drove the researchers to develop a simple yet reliable way to test the obstructive blood clots. They describe development and testing of "synthetic biomarkers" - lab-made materials for detecting what is going on in the body.

"Our results demonstrate that synthetic biomarkers can be engineered to sense vascular diseases remotely from the urine and may allow applications in point-of-care diagnostics," the researchers said.

Read more Health News.