Direct Determination of Urinary Lysozyme Using Surface Plasmon Resonance Light-Scattering of Gold Nanoparticles

The purpose of this study was to establish a simple and sensitive analytical method for lysozyme using Plasmon Resonance Light-Scattering (PRLS) technique with Gold Nanoparticles (AuNPs) as the probe. Nanomolar level of lysozyme induced AuNPs aggregation with enhanced PRLS. For 1.4 nM citrate-capped AuNPs (13 nm in diameter), the linear range of the calibration curve was 15-50 nM with a detection limit of 13.1 nM for lysozyme. Six nanomolar lysozyme can produce an observable PRLS enhancement. Most potential interfering substances present in urine had a negligible effect on the determination. The interference from human serum albumin in the urinary sample can be reduced by precipitating the albumin with ethanol at pH 4.8-4.9. The 90.1-118.2% recovery was achieved for 8 individual lysozyme-spiked urinary samples. This simple and sensitive method for lysozyme does not require sample clean-up and AuNPs modification, thus provided an alternative for urinary lysozyme determination.