How would I find a UV-VIS spectra of human urine?

lostminty · Jul 5, 2013

Preferably I would like to find a UV-VIS absorbance spectra of urine.

I have found ones that focus on the deep UV range, and one that had fluorescence peak information.

Any help would be appreciated.

colliflour · Jul 5, 2013

Same way you take the absorbance spectra of any other sample. Get a spectrometer, read the manual, do the experiment.

lostminty · Jul 5, 2013

That is my plan B. But a spectrophotometer costs 125NZD/hour :(

lostminty · Jul 5, 2013

going to the uni library to look in their volumes tomorrow morning

epenguin · Jul 5, 2013

Let us know the answer. It is interesting to know, and what these fluorescences/absorbtions are due to, though till you have instrument access you will not be able to use if for anything.

lostminty · Jul 5, 2013

ok :)

lostminty · Jul 5, 2013

found something useful, for me at least. 450nm. Where Bilirubin absorbancy peaks. Bilirubin giving urine its hue.

colliflour · Jul 5, 2013

http://jb.oxfordjournals.org/content/116/2/298.short you'd likely find something like this. Diazo compounds give strong uv-vis absorbances. You'd likely end up with a huge mess of peaks with some identifiable and most others not. What is in urine is highly dependent upon food intake, so the spectra would vary widely from person to person and day to day. There is the potential for diagnosis of diseases through urinary spectra, but I'm not sure whether that's a practiced method anywhere yet. I saw a couple of papers that used HPLC with UV spec to determine if specific compounds were present in urine, but i wouldn't expect an overall spectral determination to yield clear data.