May indicate Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) by E. coli and some of the cocci – streptococci, etc.
It usually means the sample is contaminated from an outside source. Bacteria in urine have to survive a fairly hostile environment: high osmolality due to concentrations of certain ions and waste products along with relatively low levels of nutrients.
Aside of Escherichia coli this reminds me of Ureaplasma. A group of bacteria without classical cell-walls, specialized on living in urine or epithelia of the urogenital tract. Specifically Ureaplasma urealyticum and Ureaplasma parvum. Those are typically not cultured, or not easily cultured, but may be detected by PCR. I assume also related Mycoplasmas such as M. hominis and M. genitalium may be found in urine, as well as possibly Chlamydia. In all of these cases it would mean the presence of acutely or potentially chronically infecting bacteria and possibly an imbalance of epithelial surfaces and associated microbiota.
I’m no medical doctor, however, so best talk to an urologist.
Generally urine consists gram positive cocci after sample is taken.if rare bacteria like bacillus & genera of gram negative is observed,it indicates that a person is having urine infection.
The presence of unusual bacteria in urine analysis indicates bacteremia. It means there is recent infetion due to that organism isolated from urine.
- Infection.
- Contamination of the sample.
- New science. ( This organism has never been found here before )
Bacteria and kill other bacteria in a wide variety of ways.
Whether that is good or bad or makes the bacteria “good” or “bad” is a matter of context.
Thanks for the A2A.
The answer is (drum-roll, please…)
Nobody knows.
It was a really, really long time ago.
Perhaps, somehow, a little bubble in the water on a beach got some amino acids and nucleic acids (specifically RNA) into it. Those molecules may have formed from water (containing various stuff dissolved in it) dripping onto a rock that heated and cooled off each day.
Perhaps it arrived, frozen in the ice of a comet or meteorite, from some other planet.
Nobody knows, and there is probably zero way for anyone to ever know.
That sounds kind of “zen”, doesn’t it?
Lol. Rare epithelial cells are not a kind of cell, it’s a quantity. Our entire body is lined with different types of epithelial cells. Our urinary tract in lined mostly with squamous and transitional epithelial cells. As part of normal life we shed some old cells, and grow some new ones. When a laboratory analyzes a urine sample, it quantifies the number of epithelial cells shed in your urine—rare, few, occasional, or many. “RARE epithelial cells” is a normal finding in normal urine. “MANY epithelial cells” would indicate an irritant (like an infection, bladder stone, etc) is causing higher than normal amounts of cells to be shed. So if your urine says “Rare epithelial cells” , that part of your analysis is normal.
Since the development of germ theory in the 1870s, urine has been considered sterile in healthy individuals. Like so much of what we believed about bacteria and the human body, the emergence of microbiomics in the 2000s showed this belief to be false.
Urine was considered sterile because bacteria could not be detected in healthy urine under a microscope, nor could they be cultured from it. But microscopic examination is not very sensitive – it cannot detect concentrations of bacteria below about 10^5 per mL. Fortuitously for clinicians and patients this is just about the threshold at which symptoms of bladder infections appear. Thus the typical workup for a urine specimen was to examine a drop under the microscope. If bacteria were detected, the diagnosis was UTI; if not, then UTI was ruled out.
Culture methods could have shown that bacteria are present below the threshold of microscope detection, but a large fraction of normal urinary tract flora are not culturable by standard techniques. One enterprising scientist – not surprisingly, a woman – developed culture techniques for urinary tract bacteria, and reported in 1979 that many patients thought to have “irritations” in fact had low-grade infections that could be treated with antibiotics
. She was ignored.
Culture-independent methods show that bacteria are universally present in urine
. The dominant genuses appear to be Lactobacilli and Gardnerella, both of which are also common inhabitants of the vagina. There appear to be differences between typical male and female microbiota, and between different age groups . There might well be different “urotypes” .
The new-found appreciation for the urinary microbiome has led to calls to reconsider the UTI paradigm: infection is not an either-or condition, but a continuum, and doctors should not ask whether bacteria are present but what intervention (if any) is appropriate
. Similarly, we should begin to explore what roles urinary bacteria play in health, rather than treat them simply as causes of disease . Exciting times for this lowly fluid.
The Bladder Is Not Sterile: History and Current Discoveries on the Urinary Microbiome
Footnotes
HPF means high powered field on a microscope or looking at something when it is the largest you can make it on the microscope.. Rare means it is nothing to worry about.
Yes
They are called bacteriophages.You might know them from a classic picture like this:
