Causes of blood in urine during pregnancy
A common cause of blood in the urine during pregnancy is cystitis, which is usually accompanied by painful and frequent urination and can be well treated with an antibiotic. If cystitis has been ruled out, the bleeding can also come from the uterus. This is often caused by hormonal disorders or burst small veins in the cervix, which is well supplied with blood.
Here it helps to take it easy on the body in the first months of pregnancy and to avoid sports and sexual intercourse. Taking magnesium can also help. However, if there is a very heavy bleeding, which is accompanied by back or abdominal pain, it can also be a miscarriage. Pregnant patients with blood in their urine should in any case consult their gynaecologist.
Kidney diseases as a cause
Renal diseases that are associated with blood in the urine include inflammation (glomerulonephritis, pyelonephritis), kidney stones (nephrolithiasis), renal cancer (for example renal cell carcinoma and renal pelvic carcinoma), cystic kidney changes or vascular diseases (embolism, thrombosis). Kidney damage in the presence of diabetes mellitus (diabetic nephropathy) can also be accompanied by blood admixture of the urine. With regard to the bladder, ureter and urethra, urinary tract infections, other inflammations, injuries, constrictions, stones and tumours (bladder carcinoma, urethral carcinoma, ureter carcinoma) can result in blood admixture in the urine.
Endometriosis, a disease with dislocation of the uterine mucosa into the draining urinary tract, is another cause of blood in the urine, as this mucosa is also subject to the female menstrual cycle. Blood coagulation disorders such as a lack of platelets (thrombopenia), haemophilia or a drug-induced reduction in blood coagulation (Marcumar, heparin) can also be the cause of blood in urine. Depending on the disease, it is called glomerular or post-glomerular haematuria.
In the first form there is damage to the structural units of the kidney (glomerulum = kidney cells), in the second form these structures are intact and the cause of bleeding is to be found in changes in the structures downstream of the kidney cells. These two forms of haematuria can be distinguished from each other by the appearance of the red blood cells in the urine, since in glomerular haematuria they change their shape (morphology). The urine may also be red in colour, although it does not contain any blood. Causes of this are, for example, the consumption of certain foods (beetroot), myoglobinuria (myoglobin = oxygen carrier of the muscles) after muscle breakdown or the drug rifampicin (antibiotic).
