2023 Volume 72 Issue 1 Pages 11-18
Hippuric acid (HA) is excreted in urine as a metabolic product of toluene, and HA measurement is the most popular health diagnostic test for special workers using organic solvents. This test is required by Japanese law to be carried out at least once every six months. Currently, HA is measured by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Measurement by HPLC requires a special instrument, and the test measurement output per unit time is smaller owing to batch processing. For high-speed processing and labor saving, we developed a new enzymatic reagent for HA measurement using an open-type automatic analyzer. The HPLC method was studied using JCA-BM8040G (JEOL, Tokyo, Japan), a clinical biochemistry analyzer, and we found that this method showed good accuracy, linearity, and sufficient LOD. In addition, there is a good correlation between the HPLC method and the absence of influence by methyl hippuric acid, which has a similar structure to HA. These findings suggest the usefulness of this new method for health diagnostics.
