Studies on Glutathione Stability in Erythrocytes

I N OUR PREVIOUS communications we reported! on a glutathione deficiency existing in eryt hrocytes of persons with a past history of favism or hemolytic anemia due to drugs. This dieficiency seemedi to be familial, since a high proportion of family members of the affected persons also had low glutathione concentrations in their ‘ ‘ Independently, Sansone and! Segni reported low GSH levels in the redl cells of patients with favism when compared with the red cells of controls.3 Beutler4 recently described a “glutathione stability test” which differentiated between primaquine sensitive and primaquiiie insensitive individuals. According to this test the glutathione i i the ervthrocvtes of sensitive mdividuals was lower than in control cases and was easily destroyedl by acetylphenylhydrazine and some other compounds, whihe in normal indlividhials it was stable under the same conditions. Following this lead we investigated our material. Our present communication consists of two parts: the first deals with the application of the “glutathione stability test” to our cases. In the second we report our investigations on the effect of glucose on the stability of redh ced glutathione in erythrocytes of controh and! test cases.