In my recent study I'm trying to investigate the causes of one patient's severity of his condition of severe epileptic syndrome. For this purpose I took 8 samples of night urine after the days with various values of Severity. There is a scale of day's severity from 0 (everything is fine) till 10 (Status Epilepticus). Then we did chromatography for 168 organic acids, and there was only 1 acid with correlation coefficient more than 0.75 (absolute value). This is Salicyluric acid.
Attached are two graphs, which show the high negative correlation between day's severity and concentration of that acid in urine. Of course this isn't the evidence of the existence of causality between these values.
But if the causality exists, what is the direction of it: from concentration of Salicyluric acid to severity or vice versa?
Are there any ideas?
Maybe you should keep it simple: did you check whether patient took (or received) aspirine or the likes? Salyuric acid is a metabolite of acetylsalicylic acid, after all.
Dear Dirk, I'm absolutely sure that patient didn't take Aspirine or any likes during the research period (or in any period of his life). And this result is surprising for me as well.
Salicycluric acid (SUA) or Salicylurate (SU) is the main urinary metabolite of aspirin or acetylsalicylic acid and can help in monitoring aspirin. It serves as an indicator for a variety of diseases including anemia, appendicitis, and liver disorders. However, since you are sure that your patient did not take aspirin or any similar product, high negative correlation between day's severity of severe epileptic syndrome and urine salicyluric acid and vice versa shows the role of salicyluric acid. It can further be clarified by studying the effect of salicycluric acid in animal models of epilepsy.
Thank you for new ideas, Dr. Hussain. After all we investigated the diet of patient, and the concentration of SUA was in some link with amount of vegetables, he ate a day before. The existence of third hidden factor is still discussable.
Dear Dr Roman
I am glad that you are doing nice studies.
Good Luck and many wishes.