Purine excretion by cultured skin fibroblasts from patients with abnormal purine metabolism.

Cultured fibroblasts from patients with partial or complete deficiencies of enzymes involved in purine metabolism provide a model for investigating the biosynthesis, interconversion, and excretion of purine metabolites at the cellular level. Skin fibroblast cultures were derived from five patients with hypoxanthineguanine phosphoribosyltransferase deficiency, from five subjects with idiopathic overproduction gout, from one patient with adenosine deaminase deficiency, and from four control subjects. Purine excretion was measured by recovering labeled purines from the incubation medium of cells grown in the presence of 14C-formate. In general the patterns of purine excretion by these cultured cells resembled the urinary excretion patterns of the patients from whom they were derived.