Purple Pee: Medical Phenomenon Purple Pee: Medical Phenomenon
Purple Pee: Medical Phenomenon 
Hveragerthi
14 y
5,669
This reminds me of when I tried to spike my nephews glass with potassium permaganate to make him pee dark purple as a joke. His mom ended up with it instead by mistake. Then my jar of permaganate disappeared and I did not know what happened for years. Then i heard that my nephew had come in literally crying to his mom about peeing purple. I never did find out who got him.
http://www.insidershealth.com/article/purple_pee_medical_phenomenon/2820
Purple Pee: Medical Phenomenon
A case of purple urine bag syndrome associated with Providencia rettgeri M A Al-Jubouri and M S Vardhan
Department of Chemical Pathology and Microbiology, St Helens and Knowsley Hospitals NHS Trust, Warrington Road, Prescot, Merseyside L35 5DR, UK
We would like to report this interesting case of an elderly lady (85 years old) who has been passing violet coloured urine over the past four weeks. She is living in a nursing home and has a long term urinary catheter.
There were no other symptoms but her general practitioner was worried about urine discolouration and sent three urine samples to the biochemistry department on three separate occasions to identify the cause of the violet colour. There was no history of intake of medication, food colouring, or special food items that may alter the urine colour.
The urine sample was alkaline (pH 8.5) with a strong smell of ammonia. It was centrifuged and a precipitate of fine blue crystals was identified in the sediment. The supernatant was clear and purple coloured, and was negative for haemoglobin, myoglobin, and porphyrins. At this stage, the purple urine bag syndrome
(PUBS) was suspected and an aliquot was sent to microbiology for culture and sensitivity. There was heavy growth of a coliform species identified as Providencia rettgeri, an ammonia producing bacterium, adding support to the diagnosis of PUBS. This interesting phenomenon in which the urinary catheter of some elderly patients develops intense purple colouration is thought to be caused by indirubin formation.
Various observers stated that indigo producing bacteria, which possess indoxyl sulphatase activity, usually bring about the decomposition of urinary indoxyl sulphate to indigo and indirubin.
Several bacterial species have been reported in association with PUBS including Escherichia coli, Proteus mirabilis, Morganella morganii, Klebsiella pnemoniae, and Providencia stuarti.1–5 Providencia rettgeri was isolated from our patient; to our knowledge this organism has not been reported previously in PUBS cases.
Awareness and prompt identification of this syndrome by biochemistry and microbiology departments should avoid them performing unnecessary tests on such urine samples.
Do you dislike your nephew?
He was not my favorite person, but that had nothing to do with it. A lot of my family are fond of practical jokes. So we were always pulling things on each other. Like one time we had him sit on the ground with his legs spread and poured some water between his legs. Then we gave him two forks and two of us had rags. We bet him that we could wipe up the water on the floor without him stabbing us with the forks. So we made a few tries for the water with the rags and he tried stabbing us. Then one person said now and we each grabbed a leg and pulled him through the water wiping it up with his him.
What's the point, here?
Just a joke.
That you know how to make this colour?
I had learned this a long time ago. It used to be a common college prank. There are also ways of making other colors such as blue, orange and red. The potassium permaganate used to actually be used as a simple liver function test. They had small 5 grain tablets you would swallow and drink a lot of water so the pill did not burn a hole through the stomach. If the urine did not come out purple it would indicate liver dysfunction.
The whole thing with the long-term catheter just says 'suffering', to me.
Not sure what you are referring to as far as the catheter. The permaganate just turns the urine purple temporarily. And as long as it is dissolved completely it is safe. I drank a big glass of a 1:50,000 concentrate and it wiped out my cold instantly. Tasted like liquid metal and turned my tongue green, but my symptoms went away immediately. It is a very powerful oxidizer. Because of this though I recommend not fooling with it unless people know what they are doing. It can ignite various organics and burn the skin if the dry powder comes in to contact with the skin.
