Fluorescence characteristics of human urine from normal individuals and ovarian cancer patients

Abstract

Early diagnostics of ovarian cancer is difficult, because there are no symptoms until the disease has progressed to an advanced stage. As urine contains many intrinsic fluorophores, modern fluorescence techniques are perspective candidates for new routine urine tests. The presented work deals with differences in the fluorescence of metabolites in urine of ovarian cancer patients comparing to healthy volunteers using the fluorescence excitation-emission matrices. The most serious differences were found in undiluted urine at the fluorescence emission wavelengths from 400 nm to 460 nm when excited at 310 - 390 nm. Statistical analyses of our data have shown a 5-fold reduction in the intensity of the peak at 330/420 nm (excitation/emission wavelength) for undiluted urine samples excreted by cancer patients as compared to those of normal donors. Moreover, the ratio of intensities of the peaks at 370/440 nm and at 330/420 nm is 18-times elevated in urine excreted by patients with ovarian cancer as compared to healthy urine samples. The observed changes could be interpreted as reduction of the presence of pyridoxic acid, whereas blue-fluorescing pteridines becomes dominant in excitation-emission matrices of cancer urine samples in comparison to healthy donors. We suggest pteridines, which are related to cellular metabolism, as suitable candidates for neoplasia-associated fluorescent markers in human urine. Our work showed that monitoring of human urine fluorescent metabolites offers an alternative for ovarian cancer screening.

Changes in urine autofluorescence in ovarian cancer patients

“…Zvarík et al used excitation-emission matrices of undiluted urine in ovarian cancer screening. They revealed significant differences (p < 0.001) between ovarian cancer patients and healthy donors at the emission wavelength from 400 nm to 460 nm when excited at 310 -390 nm [35]. Norgaard et al highlighted the importance of the fact, that results from fluorescent fingerprints should be interpreted as "un block", not only by considering one or a few concrete fluorophores, but also in relation to the environment in which the fluorescent compounds exist [36].…”

Aptamer-Based Detection of Ampicillin in Urine Samples

“…This intrinsic fluorescence significantly overlaps that of the fluorescein based fluorescent tags used in the previous work. The fluorescence of urine is due to the presence of flavins, which are normally found in urine at low concentrations in healthy patients and exhibit a fluorescence emission at approximately 520 nm [ 58 ]. As shown in Figure 5 , the fluorescence of urine overlaps spectrally with that of FAM but not Alexafluor647.…”

Factors Affecting Fluorescence Analysis of Diagnostically Important Urinary Metabolites—Influence of Mixture Composition

“…Application at diagnosis, screening, and follow-up of cervical cancer with a high sensitivity and specificity was first described by Masilamani et al [23] Zvarik et al [24] highlight the application of human urine fluorescent metabolites analysis in ovarian cancer screening. Anwer et al [4] apply the method in confirmation of bacteriuria.…”