Comparing pretreatment strategies to increase the yield and purity of human urinary extracellular vesicles

•The Tamm-Horsefall protein in human urine is the most difficult contaminant to remove in the isolation of urine extracellular vesicles.•Dithiothreitol is widely used to reduce the contamination of Tamm-Horsefall protein, however, this strategy cannot completely remove the contaminants.•A more simple and economical way (salt fractionation) to reduce the contamination of Tamm-Horsefall protein in urine extracellular vesicles extraction were explored.•Salt fractionation could extract more and purer extracellular vesicles in human urine samples.