Purple Urine Bag Syndrome: Series of Nine Cases and Review of Literature
PR01-PR03
Correspondence
Dr. Vikas Garg,
Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana-141001, Punjab, India.
E-mail: drviccy@yahoo.com
Purple coloured urine occurs in the patients, mainly elderly who are on urinary catheters for a long-time and develop Purple Urine Bag Syndrome (PUBS), wherein the urinary bag and the tubing turn in to purple colour. The chain reaction responsible for PUBS begins with tryptophan from the food chain being metabolised by gut bacteria like Enterobacter, Klebsiella, Citrobacter etc., which form sulfatases and phosphatases leading to accumulation of indigo (blue) and indirubin (red) that becomes purple.
Data were from both OPD and indoor patients visiting the hospital between June 2015 to July 2017. Herein, we present a series of nine cases from our tertiary care hospital that had developed PUBS which can occur in any patient with Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) on catheter with bacteria possessing these enzymes. Bed-bound patients or population with Alzheimer’s, or dementia are groups of the patients who are at higher risk for UTI. Although, PUBS is a harmless problem, prevention and control of the catheter-associated UTIs is very important in present medical era.