Adsorptive voltametry to determine platinum levels in plasma from testicular cancer patients treated with cisplatin

Patients cured of metastatic testicular cancer with cisplatin chemotherapy may suffer late adverse effects even after 20 years. The cause of these late adverse effects has not been elucidated yet. One cause might be prolonged tissue retention of platinum in these patients. Therefore, an extremely sensitive method for measuring platinum in plasma was used to investigate whether platinum is still detectable in plasma 10 to 20 years after cisplatin chemotherapy. High-pressure decomposition of plasma is followed by adsorptive voltametric determination of platinum, with a limit of quantification of 6 pg/g plasma. This procedure appeared suitable for the measurement of platinum in 44 former patients with platinum levels ranging from 22 to 140 pg/g plasma. This method is approximately 6000 times more sensitive than the standard flameless atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS) method. The platinum levels of these 44 patients were significantly elevated when compared with 20 control patients who were cured of testicular cancer but did not receive cisplatin chemotherapy (p < 0.001). There was a significant correlation between plasma platinum concentrations and follow-up time after cisplatin administration (r = -0.658,p < 0.001). This study shows that patients with testicular cancer who were treated with cisplatin can retain platinum in their body for at least 20 years. More data are needed to investigate whether there is a relation between the prolonged retention of platinum and long-term toxicity.