Determination of glutathione in hemolysed erythrocyte by flow injection analysis with chemiluminescence detection

In this work, a new sensitive method is introduced for analysis of glutathione at trace levels in blood samples. The method is based on the effect of glutathione on the chemiluminescence signal of the oxidation of luminol by sodium periodate in basic solution. The influence of chemical and manifold variables on the sensitivity was studied. At the optimized conditions, the linear range for the determination of glutathione was 1.0 × 10−8 to 1.0 × 10−5 mol L−1 with the detection limit (3σ) of 8 × 10−9 mol L−1. The relative standard deviation for 10 repeated measurements of 1.0 × 10−6 mol L−1 of glutathione was 4%. The results of the method were compared with the Ellman reference method and no significant difference was found. The influence of potential interference substances on the determination of glutathione was studied. The proposed method was applied successfully for the determination of glutathione in real samples such as erythrocyte hemolysed in normal subjects and diabetes.