Analytical methods based on liquid chromatography for the analysis of albumin adducts involved in retrospective biomonitoring of exposure to mustard agents
Abstract
The present review has for objective to list, describe, compare and critically analyze the main procedures developed in the last twenty years for the analysis of digested alkylated peptides, resulting from the adduction of albumin by different mustards, and that can be used as biomarkers of exposure to these chemical agents. While many biomarkers of sulfur mustard, its analogues and nitrogen mustards can easily be collected in urine such as their hydrolysis products, albumin adducts require blood or plasma collection to be analyzed. Nonetheless, it benefits of a wider period of detectability in human exposed patients than the previously mentioned metabolites with detection up to 25 days after exposure to the chemical agent. The detection of these digested alkylated peptides of adducted albumin constitutes an unambiguous proof of exposure. However, their determination, especially when they are present at very low concentration levels, can be very difficult due to the complexity of the biological matrices. Therefore, numerous sample preparation procedures to extract albumin and to recover alkylated peptides after a digestion step using enzymes have been proposed prior to the analysis of the targeted peptides by liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry method with or without derivatization step. This review describes and compares the numerous procedures including a number of different steps for the extraction and purification of adducted albumin and its digested peptides described in the literature to achieve detection limits for biological samples exposed to sulfur mustard, its analogues and nitrogen mustards in the ng/mL range.
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Chemical SciencesOrigin | Files produced by the author(s) |
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Public Domain
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