Kinetic measurement of guanine deaminase in serum with a centrifugal analyzer

Abstract

We describe an enzymic, one-step kinetic method for determination of guanine deaminase (guanase, EC 3.5.4.3) in serum with a centrifugal analyzer. A combined enzyme-substrate system consists of the enzymes xanthine oxidase, catalase, and aldehyde dehydrogenase, the coenzyme NAD+, the substrate guanine, and ethanol in tris(hydroxymethyl)methylamine buffer, with KCl added as activator for aldehyde dehydrogenase. The method requires only 40 microL of sample. Guanase activity in 28 samples can be determined within 10 min by setting a 4-min lag period. The increase in absorbance at 340 nm is linearly proportional to the activity of guanase to 60 U/L. Within-run precision (CV) was 1.32 to 4.50% over the range studied. Day-to-day precision corresponds to CVs of 4.8 to 7.2% over the same range of guanase activity. The reference interval, as calculated from data on 25 healthy humans, was 0 to 1.02 U/L. The enzymic automated method shows good correlation with Caraway's (Clin. Chem. 12: 187, 1966) method (r = 0.949).