Simultaneous determination of thiols and disulfides by high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection

The proposed simultaneous determination of thiols and disulfides requires 4- (aminosulfonyl)- 7-fluor-2,1,3,-benzoxadiazole (ABD-F) as the pre-column derivatization reagent for thiols and ammonium 7-fluoro-2,1,3,-benzoxadiazole-4-sulfonate (SBD-F) for disulfides followed by chromatography. The thiols and disulfides in solution are treated with ABD-F at 60°C for 5 min in pH 9.3 borate buffer containing 1 nM disodium-EDTA. After removal of excess of ABD-F with ethyl acetate, the remaining disulfides in the aqueous phase are treated with SBD-F at 60°C for 20 min in the presence of tri-n-butylphosphine, a reducing agent. The ABD-thiols and SBD-thiols thus produced are separated by reversed-phase chromatography and detected by fluorimetry (380- nm excitation, 510 - nm emission). SBD-cystein, SBD-homocystein, ABD-homocysteine, ABD-cysteine, SBD-glu- tathione, ABD-homocystein, SBD-N-acetylcystein, ABD-glutatione and ABD-N-acetylcysteine are well separated by linear gradient elution from 0.15 M H₃PO₄/CH₃CN (96:4) to 0.15 M H₃PO₄/CH₃CN (85:15) over 30 min followed by isocratic elution with 0.15 M H₃PO₄/CH₃CN (85:15) fro 10 min. The detection limits for the derivatives are in the range 0.09–0.9 pmol. When the method was applied to the determination of thiols and disulfides in rat tissues, cystein (0.75 μmol g^-1) and cystine (0.62 μmol g^-1) were obtained in kidney and reduced glutathione (1.4–3.4 μmol g^-1) was observed in liver, spleen, heart and testicle.