Nor Adrenaline (Urine) Test

Nor adrenaline or also known as nor epinephrine is one of the organic chemicals that functions in the brain and body as a neurotransmitter and a hormone. It plays an essential role in the fight-or-flight responses that control the heart rate, blood pressure, glucose and lipid metabolism in the body. The Urine test of nor adrenaline is used to detect the certain disease that leads to the overproduction of this hormone in the body. It can also be combined with the blood test as well. Your doctor will advise you to have a CATU test if there are symptoms of pheochromocytoma, neuroblastoma, or a paraganglioma, a group of rare nervous system tumors.

There are no special preparations required before the test. However, the doctor will give you the list of food that should be avoided before the test as they will fluctuate the level of noradrenaline in the body. These foods may include coffee, tea, chocolate, vanilla, different allergy medicines, walnuts, avocados, bananas, citrus food, cheese and licorice. Based on the instructions given by the doctor, one should be careful before the test to have an accurate diagnosis of the test.

When we are talking about the result of the test then value may vary from lap to lab and also from person to person depending on their medical history. Also there may be chances of false positive. For different age group, the value of normal nor-adrenaline may vary. If the value of hormones is higher than the reference value in the result, then it indicates the presence of tumors in the body. Being the first test, more urine and blood tests are performed on the body to diagnose the shape, size and the place of the tumor.

Since it is the adrenal gland that we are talking about here, so the urine test is performed to see if extra hormones are being generated in the body. The test is performed to know the different hormones in the urine over the span of 24 hours. Thus in the doctor’s lab, you will be given a 3L bottle to collect your urine. You are advised not to collect the first urine after waking up. For kids, fresh urine bags are used to collect the urine samples. This process of collection may take 24 hours same as the time taken by the test.