Neutron activation analysis of iodine in blood serum or other biological materials by substoichiometric precipitation of iodine as silver iodide

Abstract

Several modifications are proposed of the established methods of iodine determination in serum. Prior to the actual analysis, the serum is lyophilized. This preliminary treatment permits the use of large samples. Through lyophilization human blood serum samples can easily be reduced to one-tenth of the original weight. Reduction is even more dramatic with materials from other than human origin. After irradiation the samples are subjected to chemical treatment in the presence of an iodine carrier and¹³¹I-labelled thyoxine. This procedure has been adopted for the determination of the iodine content and the chemical yield in one and the same radioactive measurement. The analysis technique itself consists of an open system Schöniger combustion. The open combustion allows the use of large samples; the gases evolved are absorbed upon their subsequent passage through potassium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid; the mineralization requires less than two minutes. After the addition of a substochiometric amount of silver nitrate, silver iodide is precipitated from an ammoniacal solution as a flat sample, which has been found ideally suited for high efficiency counting with a Ge(Li) detector. The spectrum gives evidence of an excellent decontamination from the³⁸Cl,⁸⁰Br and⁸²Br activities. The iodine content can be calculated from the ratio of the photopeak areas at 364.5 keV and 442.7 keV corresponding to¹³¹I and¹²⁸I, respectively. The chemical procedure requires a mere 15 min, and the recording of the γ-ray spectrum takes no longer than 30 min. The technique is not limited to serum only. It proved well suited for the analysis of many other types of biological material, e.g. human skin tissues.