Quantification of urinary uric acid in the presence of thymol and thimerosal by high-performance liquid chromatography.

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method was developed as an alternative to automated enzymatic analysis of uric acid in human urine preserved with thymol and/or thimerosal. Uric acid (tR = 10 min) and creatinine (tR = 5 min) were separated and quantified during isocratic elution (0.025 M acetate buffer, pH 4.5) from a mu Bondapak C18 column. The uric-acid peak was identified chemically by incubating urine samples with uricase. The thymol/thimerosal peak appeared at 31 min during the washing step and did not interfere with the analysis. We validated the high-performance liquid chromatographic method for linearity, precision and accuracy, and the results were found to be excellent.