Abstract
Since a simple method for assay of polyamines in urine has been developed, urinary polyamines are widely measured in clinical laboratories. Urinary polyamine levels, however, are known to be affected by contamination with some kind of enterocolic bacteria, and by the methods of collecting urine. We have recently reported that sodium azide is a useful preserver to collect 24-h urine samples for polyamine assay. Collecting urine for 24 h, however, is usually a lot of trouble for out-patients and this prevents popularization of urinary polyamine assay in clinical medicine. We report here that the total polyamine values in 2-h urine samples, but not the polyamine/creatinine ratios in freshly voided urine samples, are correlated well with the polyamine values excreted during 24 h in urine for both healthy subjects and patients {y (μmol/2h) =0.09× (μEmol/24h) + 0.0874, r=0.906}, and that urinary excretion of cadaverine fluctuates remarkably during a day in some persons while other kind of polyamines does not.
The remarkable difference in urinary polyamine excretion among healthy individuals is mainly ascribed to the changes in cadaverine excretion. The reason why this marked difference is mainly occured in cadaverine remains to be clarified.
