Separation of cystine, penicillamine disulfide and cysteine-penicillamine mixed disulfide by automatic amino acid analysis

✍ Scribed by J.C. Crawhall; C.J. Thompson; Kathryn H. Bradley

• Book ID: 102982762
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1966
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 506 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-2697
• DOI: 10.1016/0003-2697(66)90282-x

✦ Synopsis

It has been shown (l-3) that administration of n-penicillamine orally to patients with cystinuria can reduce their urinary excretion of cystine to levels in which further cystine calculus formation does not occur. In some cases cystine calculi already present in the renal calyces or pelvis may diminish in size or disappear (4, and personal observation). In order to investigate the mechanism of this therapeutic effect, methods have been devised for measuring the disulfides and mixed disulfide of L-cysteine and n-penicillamine in urine and plasma by automatic amino acid analysis. This work was initially carried out by the gradient elution technique (5) using a Technicon amino acid analyzer. Further work was then carried out at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, using a modified Beckman 120B amino acid analyzer designed to operate by the procedure of Spackman, Stein, and Moore (6) for physiological fluids. This method was found unsuitable for this particular purpose and the instrument was modified to operate by a gradient elution procedure with more satisfactory results.