Clinical usefulness of an enzymatic determination of total urinary polyamines, excluding cadaverine

In one widely used enzymatic method for urinary polyamines, the total concentrations of four polyamines--putrescine, spermidine, spermine, and cadaverine--are determined. We report here a simple enzymatic method for measuring the total concentrations of urinary polyamines except cadaverine. The coefficients of variation (CV) for within-run measurements by this method were 4.3% (means = 17.2 mumol/L) and 1.5% (means = 66.5 mumol/L), between-run CVs were 4.8% (means = 16.8 mumol/L) and 1.8% (means = 67.5 mumol/L). The central 95% normal reference interval was 12.3-29.1 mumol/g creatinine for men and 14.1-36.8 mumol/g creatinine for women. In some cases, physiological variations in urinary polyamine excretion were large, mainly because of variations in cadaverine excretion, even in health. Pathological changes in polyamine production in the body may therefore be more easily shown by the excretion of total polyamines excluding cadaverine than by that including cadaverine.