A fast and simple headspace gas chromatographic technique for quantitatively analyzing urea in human urine

Abstract

A fast and convenient headspace gas chromatographic (HS-GC) approach was described for the estimation of urea in human urine. The HS-GC could detect the generated carbon dioxide derived from the urease-catalyzed hydrolysis of urea. It was found that the hydrolysis of urea catalyzed by urease was completed within 40 min at 35 °C. The results proved the great accuracy (relative errors ≤ 8.48%) and precision (RSD ≤ 2.66%) of the HS-GC approach. Moreover, the recoveries ranged from 97.9% to 101.5%. The new approach is rapid and automated, which provides a new way to routinely analyze urea in urine for the control of metabolic disease.