Hyperuricaemia has long been known to be one of the biochemical changes accompanying starvation (Lennox, 1924). In order to investigate the development of this hyperuricaemia, quantitative measurements have been made in blood and urine over a 14-day starvation period. The effect of inhibition of uric acid formation by means of allopurinol during the starvation period has also been studied.
Methods
SUBJECTS' REGIMENAll subjects were obese and were admitted to hospital for therapeutic starvation. The majority were female, insufficient males being included to allow a between-sex comparison. After I to 2 days on a normal ward diet when base-line values were obtained, subjects underwent 14 days of total starvation (Gilliland, 1968). One group of nine subjects was given allopurinol in a dose of 200 mg. twice daily. The other group of nineteen subjects was not given any drugs during the course of the starvation period. These are referred to as the allopurinol and control groups respectively. Daily morning specimens of serum were collected for measurement of uric acid concentration, and urines were collected for measurement of 24-hour uric acid excretion.
CHEMICAL METHODQuantitative measurements of uric acid in serum and urine were made on the Technicon Autoanalyser, using the method of Brown and Freier (1967), which is based on the carbonate-phosphate method of Caraway (1963). It has an advantage over the recommended Autoanalyser method (N-I 3 B) in that the use of the toxic cyanideurea reagent is avoided.A comparison of its accuracy with the uricase method of Liddle, Seegmiller, and Laster (1959) gave correlation coefficients (r) of 0-986 with sera over 7 mg./100 ml., and of 0-988 with sera under 7-1 mg./100 ml. (Brown and Freier, 1967). The reproducibility of the method was assessed by calculating the between-batch rather than the within-batch precision, since this was considered to be a more valid estimate in this study. The "95 per cent.
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