Determination of Thiocyanate in Human Urine
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 1999 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Book of Abstract Chiranal |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Biochemistry |
| Description | The thiocyanate ion is usually present in low concentration in human urine, serum and saliva as a result of the digestion of some vegetables containing glucosinolates. Higher concentrations of this ion, that is a metabolic product of cyanide, arise from tobacco smoke. The level of thiocyanate is thus considered as a good probe for distinguishing between smokers and non-smokers. Moreover thiocyanate is also known to block iodine uptake by the thyroid gland. Several methods have been reported for the determination of this ion in biological samples. These are the spectrophotometric or flow injection methods based on the reaction with Fe3+ or on the König reaction, gas chromatography, ion chromatography and atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Many of these methods are complicated, laborious to perform and required harmful reagents. A new sensitive and simple method has been developed for the determination of thiocyanate in human urine. The determinations were performed in a 75 mm fused silica capillary using 0.1 M b-alanine - HCl (pH 3.50) as a background electrolyte, separation voltage 18 kV (negative polarity), 25 oC temperature of capillary and direct detection at 200 nm. The method does not require sample pretreatment or the use of organic solvents. Urine samples need only 20-fold dilution with deionesed water. The proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of thiocyanate in various human urine samples. |
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