[Clinical value of the sequential study of the uric acid in CSF in patients with cerebral diseases: Part I. Brain tumor and the effect of irradiation].

Uric acid is the end product of the purine metabolism in the human and is mainly excreted to the urine. The studies on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) uric acid in patients with various neurological diseases were reported in the literature. In the present study the authors discussed the clinical value of the sequential study of the CSF uric acid content in patients with brain tumors. CSF was investigated for uric acid in 23 controls and 30 cases of brain tumor. The results were as follows: The mean value and standard deviation of the uric acid in CSF in controls was 0.23 +/- 0.13 mg/dl. The uric acid in CSF increased in patients with malignant brain tumor (0.49 +/- 0.22 mg/dl, p less than 0.005), but was in normal range in patients with benign brain tumor (0.32 +/- 0.13 mg/dl, 0.10 less than p less than 0.25). There was no significant correlation between CSF uric acid and CSF protein contents. Uric acid in the lumbar CSF was approximately 4 times higher than in the ventricular CSF in patients with brain tumor. The CSF uric acid had progressively increased during irradiation to the whole brain. The factors contributing to increase of the uric acid in CSF were thought to be increased permeability of blood-CSF barrier, global damage of brain tissue, increased nucleic acid catabolism in the central nervous system (CNS) for example in tumor, inflammation or immunoreaction, increased of xanthine, hypoxanthine or xanthine oxidase activity in the CNS, directly increased of plasma components into the CSF due to such as subarachnoid hemorrhage, intraventricular hemorrhage, bleeding in the tumor or surgical operation, dysfunction of the CSF dynamics.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)