Automated Procedure for Determination of Sialic Acids and 2-Deoxyribose in Blood and Tissues

A manual procedure for measuring sialic acids in blood and tissue and an automated procedure for measuring sialic acids in blood have been combined and modified so that sialic acid concentrations in both blood and tis-sue can be determined by continuous-flow analysis. Be-cause 2-deoxyribose interferes with tissue sialic acid determinations, there must be a correction for color produced by it. In the calculation of sialic acids, the value for 2-deoxyribose can simultaneously be obtained. In addition to the analyses of mixed standards of sialic acids and 2-deoxyribose, we report analytical data for rat blood and tissue samples. Addftlonal Keyphrases: AutoAnalyzer #{149} continuous-flow analysis #{149}rats The apparent ubiquity of sialic acids in the body is related to their presence in many cellular and plasma glycoproteins, including some hormones. Sialic acids in serum are increased in humans with rheumatoid arthritis, cirrhosis, myelomata, macroglobulinemia (1), cancer, leukemia, pneumonia (2), or various malignancies (3), and in dogs with distemper (4). Ex-ogenous steroids and actinomycin D produce signifi-cant elevations in serum sialic acid concentration in the dog (5, 6). Tissue sialic acid concentrations as determined by the thiobarbituric acid procedure (7) agree with con-centrations as determined by the resorcinol proce-dure (8). In the Warren procedure (7), 2-deoxyribose interferes, but can be corrected for by exploiting the differences in the characteristic absorption maxima for sialic acid and 2-deoxyribose. Delmotte (9) auto-mated the thiobarbituric acid procedure. However, because 2-deoxyribose interferes, the Delmotte pro-cedure cannot be used in samples containing it in high concentrations, but only for determination of sialic acids in blood, plasma, or serum. By combining the two procedures of Warren and Delmotte with a two-channel AutoAnalyzer, we could determine sialic acid and 2-deoxyribose concentra-tions in samples of both blood and tissue