Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 1987 in the subject
Medicine - Urology, Nephrology, Case Western Reserve University
(Department of Urology), language: English, abstract: In 1987, there was
so far no data about surface tension in urine of different urologic
disorders nor of physiologic human status. That is why nearly 500
out-patients were seen and their urine measured twice with a ring
tensiometer by Fa.Krüss, Hamburg. Several proposals for methods to
investigate the changes in the surface tension of biological or body
fluids have been made already, since it has been suspected that such
changes might reflect a pathophysiological status of the respective
organism. Data on systematic measurements of the surface tension of
various physiological fluids have been published, but not yet for urine
during various urological diseases. Measurements of the surface tension
of amniotic fluid were carried out clinically in conjunction with the
respiratory distress syndrome. Other measurements of the surface tension
were performed on bile, blood, cerebrospinal fluid, serum, lymph, saliva
and tears. ABSOLOM et al. investigated in 1983, whether substrates with
different surface tensions would induce a different degree of
conformational change in adsorbed protein molecules, and whether these
differences in the degree of change would be reflected by differences in
the surface tension of the adsorbed layers. Their results were in good
agreement with the relative hydrophobicity of the investigated proteins,
as determined by other, independent methods. MYSELS carried out surface
tension studies of bile salts dissolved in water with the purpose to
show that, on the base of certain assumptions, the results of
measurements of the surface tension of the solution may be translatable
directly into the monomer activity and thus yield an indication for
correlation. (...)
