Hello everyone, how are you all? Hope you all are doing great and well and i too. We have already seen what are the common crystals that we will see in urine that is calcium oxalate monohydrate and dihydrate. Now we are going to see another common crystal that we will see in urine is Uric acid crystals. We are also going to its shape and its significance.

Name of the crystal - Uric acid crystals

Shape of the crystals - Rhomboid or diamond shaped.

It can form other shapes also like rossette and barrel shaped but most commonly we will see is rhomboid or diamond shaped one.

In the below images you can see the rhomboid crystals or diamond shaped crystals that i marked with arrow.

Below images i circled the crystals.

Now the question is why these crystals are formed? So these crystals when we see purine metabolism and people who take purine rich diet like read meat and fish we will get excess of uric acid formation and when they come for excression they will accumulate and forms these rhomboid crystals. The ph required for formation of these crystals is acidic pH.
These crystals more commonly found in normal healthy individuals but also found in some pathological conditions like Gout, tumor lysis syndrome. In Gout, the serum uric acid levels also will be increased and these crystals will show birefrengence and should be seen under polarizing microscope. In tumor lysis syndrome, because of chemotherapy there is cell lysis which causes increase of uric acid and they precipitate in the kidney.
Thats why patient history and does he is on any medication and correlating with serum levels of uric acid is so important. Mostly these crystals seen in normal individuals only.

Hope you understand about uric acid crystals and its significance and how they look like under microscope.

Refrences

• Essentials of Clinical Pathology, 3rd edition by Shirish M. Kawthalkar

Thanks for reading,
With regards,