The direct determination of urinary oxalate by non-suppressed ion chromatography

In this paper we describe a simple ion chromatographic method for determination of oxalate in urine. Acidified urine was diluted 1:2 with 0.03 mol/l benzidine hydrochloride in 0.3 mol/l boric acid to precipitate sulphate. The supernatant was passed through a C18-cartridge and 100 microliters of eluant were injected into an ion chromatographic system. Oxalate was measured by nonsuppressed conductivity detection. The detection limit for urinary oxalate was 0.05 mmol/l. The recovery for spiked urine samples was 101.5% with a CV of 4.5%. The within- and between-assay coefficients of variation were less than 4.5% and 2.5%, respectively. We found the results obtained by this method to be statistically equivalent to an enzymatic assay and a different ion-chromatographic method.