An Inexpensive Biosensor for Uric Acid Determination in Human Serum by Flow-Injection Analysis

An inexpensive and easy to construct miniaturized biosensor is described for the determination of uric acid in biological fluids. The amperometric biosensor was prepared by using a carbon paste electrode prepared with uricase from Arthrobacter globiforms and tetracyanoquinodimethane as electron transfer mediator. When incorporated into a flow‐injection system it was enabled to perform 50 measurements/h of uric acid in the analytical range of 1–100 μmol dm−3 with a relative standard deviation of 0.20% (n=14). The system was applied to human serum samples analysis providing good data correlation with those obtained by the reference spectrophotometric method. A linear relationship AM (μmol dm−3)=1.02 (±0.05) SP (μmol dm−3) −0.12 (±0.13) was obtained evidencing the absence of significant error. The constructed biosensor was successfully used for at least four months (250 assays) with only a 13% of decrease in the enzymatic activity.