The pattern of urinary glycosaminoglycans excretion in relation to age in man: II. Isolation, proportions, and properties of the fraction resistant to testicular hyaluronidase

Abstract

Crude urinary glycosaminoglycan preparations were fractionated by a procedure consisting of a digestion with testicular hyaluronidase, a gel filtration through a column of Sephadex G-75, a papain digestion of the peak emerging first and a gel filtration of the papain digest. This procedure permitted the separation of the glycosaminaglycans resistant to testicular hyaluronidase from those susceptible to the enzyme and from breakdown products of small molecular weight and was applied in the study of age-related differences in the composition of preparations isolated from urines of seven healthy males aged from 3 to 83 years. In terms of uronic acid the glycosaminoglycans resistant to hyaluronidase represented for the various individuals 6–45% of the total and increased with advancing age, thus confirming our previous findings obtained by a series of different techniques. Determination of aminosugars showed that glucosamine-, uronic acid-containing glycosaminoglycan (s), likely heparan sulfate, appears to be mainly responsible for the increase with age of this fraction of urinary glycosaminoglycans.