The urine in a 78-year-old woman's catheter bag had turned a deep purple. Emergency physicians at Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina, recognized the color as purple urine bag syndrome, a condition that is usually harmless on its own. In her case, they argue, it was the most visible sign of a much larger collapse.
The case report, published online in February 2026 in Clinical Practice and Cases in Emergency Medicine, describes a woman with multiple sclerosis whose health had been failing at home. Its authors, Lindsey McKissick White, Megan Rivera, Christopher James Nash, and Sreeja Natesan, say the purple bag should prompt clinicians to look closely at the patient attached to it.
