Method of acetaldehyde measurement with minimal artifactual formation in red blood cells and plasma of actively drinking subjects with alcoholism.

After alcohol consumption, a substantial amount of acetaldehyde that is reversibly bound to protein and nonprotein components of the red blood cells circulates in the blood and could cause extrahepatic toxicity. However, acetaldehyde measurement in human red blood cells is hampered by considerable ex vivo artifactual formation as a result of nonenzymatic oxidation of ethanol during protein precipitation. To eliminate this source of artifactual formation, free and reversibly bound acetaldehyde were trapped with semicarbazide from red blood cell hemolysates, and both the stroma and the hemoglobin were sequentially removed by centrifugation and ion-exchange chromatography in carboxymethyl Sephadex, respectively. The eluted semi-carbazone was dissociated with perchloric acid, and the acetaldehyde that was released in the protein-free supernatants was measured by head-space gas chromatography. Maximal retention of hemoglobin by carboxymethyl Sephadex and complete recovery of acetaldehyde and ethanol were achieved at a pH of 5.3. The artifactual formation decreased from 2.62 +/- 0.32 mumol of acetaldehyde per millimole of ethanol in the initial hemolysates to 1.38 +/- 0.20 mumol after removal of the stroma and to a level that is comparable to measurements in plasma (0.09 +/- 0.02 mumol) after removal of both the stroma and the hemoglobin. In 12 actively drinking subjects with alcoholism, with blood ethanol levels that ranged between 9 and 81 mmol/L, the concentrations of acetaldehyde in red blood cells (11.50 +/- 1.46 mumol/L; range: 7.5 to 22 mumol/L) were minimally affected by blood ethanol levels and were three times as high as those in the plasma (3.74 +/- 1.49 mumol/L).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)