Urine

Q: What causes high protein in a child's urine, and how can you correct the problem?A: If careful and repeated tests have shown that a child has too much protein in the urine (called "proteinuria"), the child's kidneys are not working perfectly. There is a very long list of reasons why kidneys let too much protein get through. Some are temporary and trivial; others are long lasting and very serious. Some causes are treatable; some are not.We'll discuss how protein gets into the urine and some of the XTC common causes of "proteniuria," but, with the limited information you have provided, we can't guess what's causing the problem in the child you wrote about.

Many men will experience prostate enlargement as they get older, some to the point that it will cause urination problems. Dr. Michael Naslund, director of the Maryland Prostate Center at the University Maryland Medical Center, said there are many options for treatment, including surgery, drugs and lifestyle changes. What is the prostate and how does it function in the body? The prostate gland sits beneath the bladder in men. The primary function of the prostate in a young man is to produce some of the fluid in the ejaculate and to transport urine and sperm out of the body through the urethra.

Q: Our company doctor told me during a routine physical examination that there was protein in my urine. I have never had any serious illnesses and feel perfectly well now. What is the significance of protein in the urine?A: Protein in the urine (proteinuria) can be benign, but it is also an extremely sensitive marker of kidney disease. Factors that distinguish between benign and significant proteinuria include its persistence, the amount of protein in the urine and the presence or absence of other abnormalities in the urine.

Annapolis Mayor Joshua Cohen filed a police complaint Tuesday after catching a 68-year-old man, pants at his ankles, urinating off the third floor parking deck of a garage behind City Hall. "If it would have been three in the morning, I might have looked the other way," Cohen said. "But it was three in the afternoon, in broad daylight. " The man told the mayor he was "following the call of the wild" when confronted mid-stream and then cursed at Cohen's recommendation of using public restrooms nearby, according to the police report.

Q: My son had a physical for high school basketball. They checked his urine and found a little bit of protein. Should we worry?A: Chances are there is nothing wrong with your son's health, but we would need some additional information to reassure you completely.Sometimes, protein in the urine can be a sign of kidney problems. Some teen-agers, however, will have a bit of protein in the urine after exercising. Even in the absence of exercise, it is not unusual for otherwise healthy adolescents to have a small amount of protein in their urine; the cause of this is unknown.

WASHINGTON -- Months before former Oriole Jason Grimsley said he and other players were using human growth hormone, Congress was quietly pressuring baseball to save players' urine specimens so they could be analyzed when a test for the performance-boosting drug becomes available. The idea was to make certain a deterrent existed so that players could not use the growth hormone with impunity while a screening procedure was still in development. But Major League Baseball balked at the request, according to interviews with baseball officials and congressional staff.

An Oakland Mills High School lacrosse player has been disciplined for urinating into a water bottle used by Hammond High School in a game last week, according to Howard County school officials.The player -- a junior second team midfielder -- stole one of Hammond's dark-blue water bottles before the game last Thursday and replaced the water with urine, the officials said.Midway through the first half, Hammond head coach Larry Luthe and two of his players drank from the bottle. Luthe said that he checked the contents and vomited after discovering the urine.

Right about now, I'd hate to be the person who recently bought up the Baltimore Museum of Art's entire supply of postcards depicting Andres Serrano's notorious Piss Christ. Earlier this month, after a local talk-show host denounced the artist for defiling a sacred image - and the BMA for selling it - a listener went to the museum gift shop and purchased the last 13 Serrano postcards in stock to prevent anyone else from being offended by the controversial photograph. You could call that a form of private censorship, since the person who bought the images did so for the sole purpose of precluding anyone else from seeing them.

Q.In a recent column a reader suggested urinating on the feet to remove offensive odors. You replied, "This is definitely the most unorthodox home remedy we have come across."Here is a related practice. A woman named Martha Christy wrote a book called "Your Own Perfect Medicine" (Futuremed Inc.). She advocates drinking your own urine to cure many conditions. I can't attest to its effectiveness, but I think it should be high on the unorthodox-treatment scale.A. Drinking urine may seem weird to most Americans, but it is an established practice in traditional Indian and Chinese medicine.

Q. I have a question about multivitamins. I've been taking Centrum but recently switched to a high- potency capsule. I noticed that after taking the new formula, my urine turns very yellow, but with the Centrum it doesn't. Why does that happen? A. Vitamin B-2, also known as riboflavin, is responsible for the bright-yellow color of your urine. Centrum provides the recommended dietary allowance for men, 1.7 milligrams. At this level it is unlikely to cause yellow coloration. Many high-potency vitamin B formulas contain significantly more riboflavin (20-50 milligrams)

North County High School freshman Jack Andraka stood on the auditorium stage, speaking about the invention that earned him the $75,000 grand prize at the recent Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Behind him stood Dr. Anirban Maitra, a professor in the Johns Hopkins University's department of pathology who gave Jack use of his lab to craft his invention, a cheap and effective "dipstick-sensor" method of testing blood or urine to identify early-stage pancreatic cancer and other diseases.

Anyone trying to repeat 2007’s “Running of the Urinals” could end up slamming into a wall. Literally. In a move that appears to be carefully choreographed for safety but not fun, the portable toilets in the Preakness infield are clumped in groups of four and spaced out to make a long run impossibly dangerous. There was a similar arrangement last year. No official word on whether this was done intentionally, but Clay Kirkland is crushed. He watched the infamous YouTube video — where people threw beer cans at runners dashing across the top of urinals — and came to Baltimore to participate.

The NFL apparently wants more than just a bigger cut of the league's revenue pool. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Monday that the league is insisting on human growth hormone testing as part of the new collective bargaining agreement with the players. He stressed the need to keep such banned substances out of the sport after telling 700 Baltimore-area high school football players at Woodlawn High about the dangers and repercussions of using performance-enhancing drugs. "The integrity of the NFL is critical," Goodell said.

As tasteless as the new Preakness InfieldFest campaign centered on "Kegasus" may be, it is nothing compared to the infamous "running of the urinals. " Where were Lisa Simione, Pat McDounough and John Myers when the Maryland Jockey Club put a halt to the BYOB policy? Much space was given in this paper to criticizing the party pooper Preakness people back then. It is a fine line between preserving the party atmosphere without the debauchery, and I applaud the folks at Pimlico for trying.

Calvin E. Lockner, the self-professed white supremacist who was accused of beating an elderly black fisherman last year then stealing his truck, pled guilty to four charges including assault Wednesday, and agreed to a 31-year prison term as part of the deal. Sentencing is scheduled for Monday morning, to give the victims, including 77-year-old James Privott, who lost two teeth in the South Baltimore attack, a chance to appear. Privott was unavailable Wednesday, according to Baltimore state's attorney spokesman Joseph Sviatko.

Being a Rosedale native, Stacy Keibler has been to a Preakness or two in her time, so she was thrilled when she was asked to host Infieldfest, which was headlined by ZZ Top. When the actress and Dancing With the Stars contestant arrived at Pimlico Race Course on Saturday morning, however, she wasn't sure how the day was going to turn out. "When I got here around 9:30, I just couldn't believe that this was the infield for Preakness," she said of the...

A Miami company has introduced a new over-the-counter kit to monitor a woman's ovulation cycle, essential to planning or avoiding pregnancy. The catch: Unlike popular kits that use urine to detect a woman's monthly hormone levels, the OvaTel (ovatel.com) is a saliva-based test. A woman uses a small, portable microscope to determine whether her saliva has higher salt levels than normal - an indication of ovulation. Fertility Tech Inc., selling the OvaTel for $21.95, says it is the first nonbattery-operated saliva-based test.

Eric Carroll, the former Westminster police officer who says his firing was based on a mishandled urine sample obtained under false pretenses, had admitted "ingestion" of illegal drugs, according to the department's answer to Mr. Carroll's $8 million federal lawsuit.The department's response, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, said Mr. Carroll had, at least once before his firing in December 1993, "admitted intentional ingestion of illegal drugs to the police."Mr. Carroll's attorney called the allegation unfair yesterday.

Well, now we know the whole locavore thing really has arrived. An aspiring groom opted against the old fancy-schmancy restaurant setting and popped the question a couple of Sundays ago at the Baltimore farmers' market. After blowing an air horn to get the crowd's attention, Will Hester got down on one knee at his pickle booth and offered Gwynne Harper his briny hand in marriage. "I was wearing the money belt pouch and smelling of pickles," said Hester, 31. No telling what Freud would have said about a marriage proposal at a pickle booth.

Yes, employees are getting more and more brazen in their efforts to falsify employers' drug tests. But, employers are on to them and their efforts usually fail. This according to Amitava Dasgupta, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School. After studying this topic for the past few years, he recently presented his findings to members of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry at its annual meeting in Washington. "I became interested in the ways people cheat when our hospital started drug testing," says Dasgupta.