Urinary purine derivates excretion as an indicator of in vivo microbial N flow in cattle: A review

Microbial protein flow to the duodenum may be regarded as the most important and sensitive indicator to optimise rumen metabolism in high-yielding dairy cows. In this review, the methodology and the sources of variation to estimate the duodenal microbial N flow with urinary excretion of purine derivatives (PD) as a non-invasive method is discussed. The urinary PD excretion was linearly related with the amount of purine bases (PB) infused in the abomasum or duodenum, but the recovery of PB in urine differed between experiments. The main sources of variation in the relationship between microbial N flow and urinary PD excretion are dietary contribution of nucleic acids to duodenal flow, varying N:purine ratio in duodenal digesta, differences in intestinal digestibility of nucleic acids and infused PB, and endogenous contribution of PD to urinary excretion. The recycling of PD to the rumen is negligible, and does not explain the incomplete urinary recovery of PD. A large proportion of the total PD is excreted as allantoin in urine. In some experiments this proportion was constant, whereas in others it varied with diet or physiological state of the animal. The excretion of PD in milk is not a suitable indicator of microbial N flow, due to mammary purine catabolism to uric acid and due to the strong positive correlation between milk allantoin excretion and milk yield. Instead of total urine collection, the molar ratio between urinary PD and creatinine can be used to estimate microbial N flow. However, a substantial between-animal variation in this ratio was found, and effects of changes in energy balance of dairy cows on urinary creatinine excretion should be determined. The urinary excretion of total PD and of allantoin provided lower estimates of duodenal microbial N flow than with measurements in the omasum or duodenum, but they closely reflected the changes observed with these measurements.