Antineoplastic therapy and urinary enzymes. Preliminary note on the determination of urinary N-acetyl-beta-D-glucosaminidase in patients treated with cisplatin

We discussed the diagnostic value of urinary enzymes as non invasive test of renal integrity in medicine. Then we assayed the N-Acetyl-beta-D-glucosaminidase (NAG) excretion in urines of inpatients receiving cis-platinum, a useful anti-cancer but nephrotoxic agent fort the proximal tubule; we used the colorimetric instead of fluorimetric procedure, recently described in detail by Price who tested it on patients with a variety of renal diseases. The results demonstrated the sensibility and the specificity of colorimetric procedure, and therefore we concluded that the assay of urinary NAG activity may be used in the clinical chemistry and toxicology laboratory, because the test is simple to perform.