Continuous-flow enzymic determination of creatine in urine.

A new enzymic method is described for the determination of creatine in urine by continuous-flow analysis. The measurement is accomplished by transforming creatine to formaldehyde in reactions catalyzed by creatinase (creatine amidinohydrolase) and sarcosine dehydrogenase. The formaldehyde is reacted with 4-amino-3-hydrazino-5-mercapto-1,2,4-triazole to form a purple product, which is measured colorimetrically. The method gives a linear standard curve for creatine concentrations up to 100 mg/L. Precision and analytical recovery are excellent, and results correlate well with those by the more-difficult Folin method, which currently is most often used for this analysis.