PUZZLE:
A patient came in with urinary frequency & urgency.
Here is the urinalysis.

What do you suspect as the underlying cause?

(I will show the answer after a dozen or so replies.)

Thanks so much for very smart answers, everybody, quickly passing one dozen.

This patient wears a mask many hours per day. Here& #39;s what happened to the urine.

Obstructed air flow keeps more carbon dioxide for extended time in masked airspace --> more carbon dioxide in lungs -->

More carbon dioxide in lungs (hypercapnia) --> lowers pH -->
increasing acid condition (respiratory acidosis) overwhelms compensatory mechanisms of the body --> The kidneys now have the hard job of . . .

The kidneys now have the hard job of dumping acid. How do the kidneys get rid of bad stuff? Excrete that acid in the urine. --> Urinalysis shows very low pH, bottom of the chart: pH = 5.0. That& #39;s about as acid as coffee. Which is fine for coffee, but . . .

But not so great for urine, which reflects what got taken from blood (remembering that kidneys& #39; main job is to clean the blood, by excreting less than ideal substances into urine for disposal).

So the moral of the story is . . .