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Why some people drink too much (water)
Anyone who drinks more than three liters per day probably suffers from the so-called "polydipsia-polyuria syndrome". This can be treated well, but unfortunately there are two fundamentally different causes - which must be tackled differently. Reliable tests are therefore needed. A team from the University of Basel has now compared two methods and has come to a clear conclusion.
Mental illness or vasopressin deficiency? Until this question is clearly answered, pathological drinking by the liter cannot be treated. This is because giving vasopressin to a person who does not suffer from a deficiency of this hormone can lead to life-threatening water intoxication.
A test must therefore be carried out in order to be able to make a decision. Two methods are considered particularly reliable: a saline infusion and an arginine infusion, both of which stimulate the release of vasopressin. But which method is better?
Prof. Dr. Mirjam Christ-Crain and PD Dr. Julie Refardt, both research group leaders at the DKF, together with several national and international centers, have now directly compared the two tests and published the results in the "New England Journal of Medicine". The study with 158 participants shows that over 95 percent of patients could be correctly diagnosed using salt infusion, while the test using arginine infusion only led to the correct diagnosis in just under 75 percent of cases.
This means we now know even better why some people drink too much (water).
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