Hypoxanthine and xanthine concentrations determined by high performance liquid chromatography in biological fluids from patients with xanthinuria.

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In the present paper , we report the biochemical features of six cases of xanthinuria . For these studies , the concentrations of hypoxanthine and xanthine have been measured in urine , plasma and also erythrocyte samples by a rapid , sensitive high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC ) method . The analyses of plasma and erythrocyte samples require a very sensitive method relative to physiological concentrations and rigorous sampling conditions in order to achieve accurate results . In the cases reported in the literature , total oxypurine levels (hypoxanthine + xanthine ) have been generally measured in plasma and urine by an enzymatic spectrophotometric method . In our studies , using HPLC , we found that xanthine is the major oxypurine compound in plasma and urine samples from patients with xanthinuria . In erythrocytes , a biological sample which has not been analysed up to now , we found that xanthine is present at high concentrations whereas it is not detectable in erythrocytes from healthy subjects .