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Neuro Advanced Profile + Cortisol, Cortisone, Norepi & Epi Hormones in dried urine containing the following 35 tests:
Neuro Advanced Profile:
The body relays information through the nervous system about anything that it experiences, hears, touches smells or ingests – continuously communicating back and forth between the brain and the body.
The current treatment paradigm in addressing poor brain health relies on diagnostic tools that encompass the evaluation of clinical signs and symptoms. Despite the lack of testable biomarkers for mood disorders, for many patients, treatments can generally be effective. However, even after treatment frequent relapse episodes can still occur. Furthermore, a large number of patients suffer from treatment-resistant depression . Therefore, selection of the best therapeutic regimen for each patient remains a challenge, and is often discovered through a time-consuming process of trial and error. Also, no single approach works for everyone with any one disorder.
Targeted neurotransmitter testing can help health care practitioners achieve a diagnostic edge beyond the traditional psychological inventory by identifying specific imbalances in neurotransmitter levels. Based on neurotransmitter test results, practitioners can identify specific biochemical heterogeneities for each particular patient, and objectively monitor therapeutic responses during and after intervention. Neurotransmitter testing objectively enhances medical assessment and represents a major advance in the personalization of the treatment of mood disorders.
The importance of effectively assessing and treating mood disorders cannot be overstated. Objectivity is a key element to the therapeutic approach to mood disorders. Currently, the standard of care dictates a trial and error pharmaceutical approach is taken with each patient based on both self and clinician assessments. However, without information yielded from objective clinical testing, selection of the most effective treatment for each particular patient with a mood disorder continues to be a challenge. While this may prove effective for some patients, the potential for harm during those interim treatment failures is a real concern for clinicians and patients alike. Urinary neurotransmitter testing is performed with the goal that therapeutic interventions may be introduced to address, alleviate, and improve a patient’s well-being and has a breadth of data to support the efficacy of the test in clinical practice. Evaluation of neurotransmitter levels in urine provides valuable information about the heterogeneity of patient biochemistry, epigenetics, and how the body functions as a whole. Although the urine test is not a direct measure of brain neurotransmitter levels, it provides relevant information with respect to neurotransmitter regulation in the brain, which can be altered by treatment. The levels in urine often parallel levels in the central nervous system, and the test may therefore assist in the selection of patients with mood issues who might respond to specific pharmaceutical or over-the-counter treatment interventions. In other words, the test provides a means to glean a functional systemic perspective regarding each neurotransmitter in the periphery, which ultimately operates under the control of the brain. How do neurotransmitters end up in urine? Some neurotransmitters are produced in the brain and transported across the blood-brain barrier into blood, and others are produced in the periphery (e.g., norepinephrine and epinephrine). Nephrons, the functional units of the kidney, filter circulating neurotransmitters or their precursors from the blood into urine. For some neurotransmitters, urinary measurements correlate with levels in the central nervous system (e.g., glutamate, PEA), and for others, what ends up in urine is only reflective of peripheral biosynthesis (e. g., serotonin, GABA, dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine). Regardless of production origin, neurotransmitter excretion reflects the overall systemic neurotransmitter tone, dysregulation of which may contribute to disease states. The ability to identify abnormality across specific areas of the catecholamine and PEA, GABA/ glutamate, serotonin, histamine, and glycine pathways allows healthcare providers to develop a tailored treatment plan to the specific areas associated with imbalance.
The nature of urine collection is non-invasive and preferable over the traditional invasive collection approaches such as measurement of cerebrospinal fluid. Even with liquid urine collection the patient experiences the enormous hassle of collecting all urine voids over a 24-hour period into a large jug. To circumvent this inconvenience some labs have settled for collecting only the 2nd void, limiting neurotransmitter results to a single morning time point snapshot. ZRT Laboratory offers an alternative to the liquid urine collection method by offering a simple and convenient collection of four separate urine samples at specific time points throughout the day – 1st morning, 2nd morning (approximately 2 hours after the first collection), early evening, and bedtime. Urine is collected onto filter strips by urinating directly on the strip, or by dipping the filter card in a cup containing the collected urine. The urine cards are then allowed to dry overnight, and sent to ZRT for testing. The convenience of the collection method warrants patient compliance and ease of incorporation into clinical practice.