Effect of acute clinical stress on the levels of hexosamine in serum and its excretion in urine.

The total serum hexosamine 2 level is elevated in many unrelated chronic diseases (1, 2), and in experimental animals following acute injury (3, 4). It is not clear whether this elevation is due to increased production, diminished utilization or merely a shift of tissue hexosamines into the circulation. Since the activity of the adrenal glands is increased in many of these conditions of acute and chronic stress, the role of the adrenal cortex iti sontrclling serum hexosamine levels has been studied. During the course of these studies, it was noted that normal urine contained relatively large amounts of hexosamine, which also increased during conditions of stress. The excretion of hexosamine in the urine in a variety of clinical situations has been measured, therefore, for the purpose of defining factors which alter the rate of its excretion and of correlating excretion levels with changes in serum hexosamine. An ion exchange technique has been applied to urine hydrolysates for the purpose of separating hexosamines from the many chromogens in urine which interfere with the colorimetric determination of hexosamine (5). Previously reported studies on urinary hexosamine have not taken this into account and consequently report erroneously high values (6, 7).