Brain and plasma tetrahydroisoquinolines in rats: effects of chronic ethanol intake and diet.

Brain concentrations of salsolinol (SAL), a simple tetrahydroisoquinoline (sTIQ) condensation product of dopamine (DA) and acetaldehyde, are reported to increase in chow-fed rats drinking ethanol/H2O ad libitum. However, our analyses showed that rat chow contains traces of SAL and, as previously reported, appreciable 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA), a sTIQ precursor. To examine the effect of consumption of ethanol in a DOPA- and SAL-free diet on endogenous sTIQs, we analyzed two brain regions and blood plasma of rats undergoing prolonged intake (3 weeks and 23 weeks) of liquid diet containing 6.

Estimation of blood acetaldehyde during ethanol metabolism: a sensitive HPLC/fluorescence microassay with negligible artifactual interference.

A novel high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) procedure has been developed for the quantitation of acetaldehyde in 50 microliter samples of primate whole blood during ethanol metabolism. This microassay has a minimum detectable concentration of about 0.1 microM, displays an intra-assay precision under 10%, and is linear over a reasonable concentration range.