> >Urine tests are easier, but urine doesn't contain all the
> >stuff we would like to measure.
>
> But does it, at least, contain things which might be harder to monitor from
> blood samples?
I think so. I haven't got my medicine book here, so I cannot check,
but there are some substances that are more concentrated in urine than
in blood (especially those linked with signs of kidney failure, of
course). But the blood is richer in information, urine is highly
filtrated and does not normally contain the proteins that provide the
really interesting clues.
> >There are a lot of information in the blood. Kinase levels tell about
> >muscle damage (esp. infarcts), there are several marker molecules for
> >liver or kidney diseases, LDL and antibody levels are interesting and
> >so on. But to interpret these results well you need some expertise,
> >even 100% healthy people tend to have at least some odd values.
>
> Interesting, because my suggestion was going to be to just get some
> healthy ranges and warn users that the test kit is not foolproof.
It is just a matter of statistics. If the normal range contains 95% of
the population, then if you make 10 tests there is a 40% chance that
at least one of them will be out of the normal range even for a
healthy person. With a hundred tests it is a 99.4% chance that at
least one will be strange.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y