Screening for adenine and hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase deficiencies in human erythrocytes by high-performance liquid chromatography

A screening method using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) for the simultaneous detection of deficiencies of adenine phosphoribosyltransferase (APRT) and hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) activities in human erythrocytes is described. Both enzyme reactions of APRT and HPRT in lysates treated with a charcoal-dextran were simultaneously carried out in the same reaction tube and the enzyme activities were determined by measuring the increases in absorbance at 260 nm of adenosine and inosine converted from adenosine-5'-monophosphate and inosine-5'-monophosphate with alkaline phosphatase. Adenosine and inosine were separated from adenine and hypoxanthine by a reversed-phase column.

The method could detect 1% of normal APRT activity and 0.3% of normal HPRT activity. The within-run coefficients of variation for APRT and HPRT activities were 3.2 and 3.4%, respectively.