DEVELOPMENT OF A PROCEDURE FOR THE DETERMINATION OF CHROMIUM IN SAMPLES OF URINE AND SERUM BY NEUTRON-ACTIVATION ANALYSIS

Since the mid-fifties the possibility of a causal relationship between deficient chromium and insulin metabolism and the manifestation of certain varieties of diabetes mellitus has been presumed. The determination of the chromium status under pathophysiological conditions may be helpful for the study of this problem. For these purposes an analytical procedure as reference system was developed which allows the determination of chromium in biological matrices down to the concentration of 0.03 ng/ml. It is based on NAA and is used in the framework of a commonly used procedure based on GF-AAS. For its application blood and urine samples are freeze-dried and irradiated. After wet digestion with HNO3 in a microwave combustion system chromium is separated tor measurement from the matrix nuclides with the help of the ion-exchanger Cellex-P. The individual steps of the procedure were evaluated by means of tracer experiments.