The objective of this study was to provide an alternative method for the determination of purine derivatives (PD, which include allantoin, uric acid, hypoxanthine and xanthine), creatinine and total nitrogen (N) concentration in urine.
About 180 urine samples from cattle, buffaloes and rabbit were collected and analyzed for PD by HPLC, creatinine by spectrophotometry and N by Kjeldahl method. The urine samples were then analyzed by Fourier Transformed Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (FT-NIR) to find conformity between this technique and HPLC and colorimetric methods.
FT-NIR can predict allantoin, uric acid, hypoxanthine, xanthine, creatinine, total N and sum of N in both allantoin and uric acid with a satisfactory level of accuracy; the determination coefficient (r2) of validation ranged from 0.888% for uric acid to 0.982% for total N. The coefficients of determination for allantoin, creatinine and sum of N in both allantoin and uric acid were 0.92, 0.894 and 0.90%, respectively.
Hypoxanthine and xanthine in urine samples were not detectable by NIRS, probably because of their low concentrations, and therefore they were not considered for instrumental calibration.
