Spectrophotometric evaluation of interferences in three iron reactions for the determination of serum total cholesterol

A spectrophotometric and chemical evaluation of reported interferences for three iron reactions for the determinations of serum cholesterol has been presented. It has been shown that all three reactions are affected by various interfering substances, such as 2-thiouracil, nitrate, azide, bromide, diethylstilbesterol, and steroids. Spectral differences between the reactions are probably due to solvent and anion effects.The incorporation of uranyl acetate as a precipitating agent into the ferric acetate-uranyl acetate procedure did not make the results obtained comparable with the Abell-type extract of a very icteric serum. Incorporation of ferrous sulfate does not noticeably affect the intensity or stability of color development with standards.As proposed, the ferric acetate-uranyl acetate procedure for the determination of cholesterol represents a modified iron reagent, but the reaction mechanism and the procedure described for it is neither new nor direct. The use of the ferric acetate reagent for serum cholesterol as opposed to ferric chloride, ferric ammonium chloride, or ferric perchlorate appears to have no real advantages as a color reaction. In fact the reaction is less sensitive while reagent preparation is more tedious, time consuming, and expensive than the ferric chloride procedure. Although no quantitative studies were performed, the only effects that chloride had on the reactions were in the region of 400 nm, a wavelength sufficiently far enough away from the 560-nm peak that it did not affect determinations. The concept that the ferric acetate-uranyl acetate reagent contains only acetate and sulfate anions is nullified as soon as one adds serum to the reagents.