Urinary excretion of duodenal purine derivatives in Kedah-Kelantan cattle

Three male Kedah-Kelantan (KK) cattle each fitted with a ruminal and a T-sh aped duodenal cannulae, with an initial body weight of 178.3 +/- 5.78 kg we re used to study the recovery rate of urinary purine derivatives (PD) after duodenal infusion of incremental amounts of purine bases (PB). During the experiment, the cattle were fed at a maintenance energy level with a diet c ontaining 40% oil palm frond and 60% concentrates. Basal purine flows into the duodenum from the maintenance diet were estimated. Purine bases in the form of adenosine (46%) and guanosine (54%) were infused into the duodenum in four incremental rates equivalent to 10, 15, 30 and 45 mmol purine per d ay. Urinary allantoin, the principal PID was linearly correlated with PB in put, while the contributions of other PD were not affected by treatments. T he relationship between daily urinary PD (allantoin, uric acid, hypoxanthin e and xanthine) excretion (mmol per day) and duodenal PB flow (mmol per day ) was Y = 0.847X + 7.146 (r(2) = 0.50, P < 0.001), suggesting that 0.85 of the supplied exogenous PB were excreted in urine, with an endogenous excret ion of 7.15 mmol per day. Urinary PD excretion rates of zebu cattle are sim ilar to those of European cattle. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.