Ribonuclease in human serum and urine expressed in arbitrary standard units of activity

A definition of the arbitrary unit expressing the catalytic activity of ribonuclease (RNase) in serum and urine has been proposed. The unit defines the RNase activity solely in terms of a rate of RNase mediated decomposition of RNA-substrate. The proposed unit can be also used for expressing the results of RNase determining in former studies, if their analytical procedures have been enough precisely described. This makes possible the comparison of the recent experimental data with results obtained in other studies carried out with the use employment the nonstandardized RNase determining procedures. In this paper the comparison between the values expressing RNase activity in human serum and urine, published in various studies in years 1965-1992 and recalculated in the proposed arbitrary units, is presented.