Citation

Yamagishi Y, Iwase H, Ogra Y. Sci. Rep. 2021; 11(1): e11573.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1038/s41598-021-91145-y

PMID

34079008

PMCID

PMC8172840

Abstract

Malathion, diethyl 2-[(dimethoxyphosphinothioyl)thio]butanedioate, is one of most widely used organophosphoryl pesticide, and it has been detected in several clinical cases of accidental exposure and suicide. It is reported that the observed malathion concentration in blood of persons who suffer from malathion poisoning is smaller than the expected concentration. Because malathion is bound to human serum albumin (HSA), recovery of malathion in the free form is insufficient. We detected malathion adducts in HSA by liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-Q/TOF-MS). The mass spectra showed that malathion was preferably bound to the lysine (K) and cysteinylproline (CP) residues of HSA. The K- and CP-adducts of malathion were increased in vitro with a dose-dependent fashion when its concentration was smaller than the lethal dose. Further, the K-adduct was also detected in post-mortem blood of an autopsied subject suffering from intentional malathion ingestion. These results suggest that the K-adduct seems to be available to use a biomarker of malathion poisoning, and the determination of the K-adduct could make possible to estimate the amount of malathion ingestion.

Language: en

Keywords

Humans; Postmortem Changes; Reproducibility of Results; Chromatography, Liquid; Tissue Distribution; Mass Spectrometry; Insecticides; Malathion; Serum Albumin, Human