Urinary excretion of hyaluronan in man.

A specific assay for hyaluronan (hyaluronic acid) has been applied to the determination of the polysaccharide in urine. The excretion in 22 healthy subjects was 330 micrograms/24 h (SD 77). The excretion was correlated with body weight and was therefore somewhat higher in males than in females. The molecular weight of the main fraction of urinary hyaluronan was in the range of 4000 to 12,000 in accordance with the hypothesis that it originates from blood and arises by glomerular filtration. A small fraction was of higher molecular weight and could have been produced in the urinary tract. Hyaluronan in male and female urine displayed the same molecular weight distributions. Patients with rheumatoid arthritis and primary biliary cirrhosis showed a two-fold and three-fold increase, respectively, of hyaluronan in urine with concurrently high levels of the polysaccharide in serum. A patient with Werner's syndrome displayed a ten-fold increase of the polysaccharide in both serum and urine.