Surface-Enhanced Raman Analysis of Uric Acid and Hypoxanthine Analysis in Fractionated Bodily Fluids

Furong Tian; Luis Felipe das Chagas E Silva de Carvalho; Alan Casey; Marcelo Saito Nogueira; Hugh J Byrne

doi:10.3390/nano13071216

Surface-Enhanced Raman Analysis of Uric Acid and Hypoxanthine Analysis in Fractionated Bodily Fluids

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2023 Mar 29;13(7):1216. doi: 10.3390/nano13071216.

Authors

Furong Tian¹, Luis Felipe das Chagas E Silva de Carvalho^{1

2

3}, Alan Casey¹, Marcelo Saito Nogueira^{4

5}, Hugh J Byrne¹

Affiliations

¹ FOCAS Research Institute, Technological University Dublin Camden Row, D08CKP1 Dublin, Ireland.
² Centro Universitario Braz Cubas, Mogi das Cruzes 08773-380, Brazil.
³ Universidade de Taubate, Taubate 12080-000, Brazil.
⁴ Tyndall National Institute, Lee Maltings Complex, Dyke Parade, T12R5CP Cork, Ireland.
⁵ Department of Physics, University College Cork, College Road, T12K8AF Cork, Ireland.

Abstract

In recent years, the disease burden of hyperuricemia has been increasing, especially in high-income countries and the economically developing world with a Western lifestyle. Abnormal levels of uric acid and hypoxanthine are associated with many diseases, and therefore, to demonstrate improved methods of uric acid and hypoxanthine detection, three different bodily fluids were analysed using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Gold nanostar suspensions were mixed with series dilutions of uric acid and hypoxanthine, 3 kDa centrifugally filtered human blood serum, urine and saliva. The results show that gold nanostars enable the quantitative detection of the concentration of uric acid and hypoxanthine in the range 5-50 μg/mL and 50-250 ng/mL, respectively. The peak areas of HPLC and maximum peak intensity of SERS have strongly correlated, notably with the peaks of uric acid and hypoxanthine at 1000 and 640 cm^-1, respectively. The r² is 0.975 and 0.959 for uric acid and hypoxanthine, respectively. Each of the three body fluids has a number of spectral features in common with uric acid and hypoxanthine. The large overlap of the spectral bands of the SERS of uric acid against three body fluids at spectra peaks were at 442, 712, 802, 1000, 1086, 1206, 1343, 1436 and 1560 cm^-1. The features at 560, 640, 803, 1206, 1290 and 1620 cm^-1 from hypoxanthine were common to serum, saliva and urine. There is no statistical difference between HPLC and SERS for determination of the concentration of uric acid and hypoxanthine (p > 0.05). For clinical applications, 3 kDa centrifugal filtration followed by SERS can be used for uric acid and hypoxanthine screening is, which can be used to reveal the subtle abnormalities enhancing the great potential of vibrational spectroscopy as an analytical tool. Our work supports the hypnosis that it is possible to obtain the specific concentration of uric acid and hypoxanthine by comparing the SER signals of serum, saliva and urine. In the future, the analysis of other biofluids can be employed to detect biomarkers for the diagnosis of systemic pathologies.

Keywords: blood serum; bodily fluids; centrifugal filtration; gold nanostars; hypoxanthine; saliva; surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy; uric acid; urine; vibrational spectroscopy.

Grants and funding

F.T. is funded under a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship, Grant Agreement no. PIEF-GA-2012-332462.