Assessment of hypolactasia and site-specific intestinal permeability by differential sugar absorption of raffinose, lactose, sucrose and mannitol.

The sugar absorption test is a non-invasive test for investigating intestinal permeability by simultaneous measurement of four probe sugars. In this study, we evaluated the utility of raffinose, lactose, sucrose and mannitol as probe sugars and calculated their urinary recovery as a percentage of ingested dose (mol/mol) and the recovery ratios of raffinose/mannitol, lactose/ raffinose and sucrose/raffinose. The reference ranges for these ratios, established from 39 healthy volunteers, are 0.

Assessment of intestinal permeability: enzymatic determination of urinary mannitol, raffinose, sucrose and lactose on Hitachi analyzer.

The sugar absorption test is the usual test for measurement of intestinal permeability. After intestinal absorption of probe sugars the subsequently excreted sugars are measured in urine. We have developed four enzymatic methods for the measurement of the urinary concentration of the probe sugars mannitol, raffinose, lactose and sucrose.