Plasma arginine levels in arginase deficiency in the "real world"

Deficiency of arginase-1, the final enzyme in the urea cycle, causes a distinct clinical syndrome and is characterized biochemically by a high level of plasma arginine. While conventional therapy for urea cycle disorders can lower these levels to some extent, it does not normalize them. Until now, research on plasma arginine levels in this disorder has primarily relied on data from specialized tertiary centers, which limits the ability to assess the natural history and treatment efficacy of arginase-1 deficiency due to the small number of patients in each center and technical variations in plasma arginine measurements among different laboratories.

In this study, we reported plasma arginine levels from 51 patients with arginase-1 deficiency in the database of Quest Diagnostics. The samples were collected from different US regions.

The mean plasma arginine level in these treated patients was 373 μmol/L and the median level was 368.4 μmol/L. Our data set from 30 arginase deficiency patients with plasma amino acid data from five or more collections revealed significant correlations between the levels of arginine and five other amino acids (citrulline, alanine, ornithine, glutamine, and asparagine).

Despite treatment, the arginine levels remained persistently elevated and did not change significantly with age, suggesting the current treatment regimen is inadequate to control arginine levels and underscoring the need to seek more effective treatments for this disorder.