Determination of cysteine and glutathione based on the inhibition of the dinuclear Cu(II)-catalyzed luminol–H2O2 chemiluminescence reaction

• Introducing a new dinuclear copper(II) complex as a unique catalyst in luminol CL.
• The complex acts as an artificial peroxidase model at pH as low as 7.5 in water.
• This new CL method has applied for GSH and CySH detection in human serum and urine.
• The LOD (3σ) were 2.7 × 10−8 and 6.8 × 10−8 M for GSH and CySH, respectively.

The catalyzed luminol chemiluminescent reaction has received a great amount of attention because of its high sensitivity and low background signal which make the reaction an attractive analytical chemistry tool. The present study, introduces the beneficial catalytic effects of dinuclear Cu(II) complex [Cu2L2(TAE)]X2, where TAE = tetraacetylethane; L = N,N’-dibenzylethylenediamine and X = ClO4 on the luminol chemiluminescent reaction as a novel probe for the determination of glutathione (GSH) and L-cysteine (CySH) in human serum and urine. The [Cu2L2(TAE)]X2 has exhibited highly efficient catalytic activity of luminol CL as an artificial peroxidase model at pH as low as 7.5 in water in the presence of H2O2⋅GSH and CySH can induce a sharp decrease in CL intensity from the [Cu2L2(TAE)]X2-catalyzed luminol system. Under the selected experimental conditions, a linear relationship was obtained between the CL intensity and the concentrations of GSH and CySH in the range of 1.0 × 10−7–1.0 × 10−4 M, with detection limits (S/N = 3) of 2.7 × 10−8 and 6.8 × 10−8 M and RSD < 4.2% (n = 7) for GSH and CySH, respectively.

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