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Speciation 98: Abstracts
Lan-Chi Tran-Ho1, Peter M. May2 and Glenn T. Hefter2
1 Department of Physical Chemistry, University
of Leoben, A-8700 Leoben, Austria;
2 Chemistry, Division of Science, Murdoch
University, Murdoch WA 6150, Australia
Although penicillamine has been used extensively in the treatment of Wilson's disease, the mechanism of its action towards copper in vivo is still not well understood. In order to obtain proper information about the interaction between copper and penicillamine, a sound knowledge of stability of copper(I)-penicillamine complexes is necessary. Nevertheless, previous studies on the equilibrium properties of the Cu(I)-penicillamine have been rather rudimentary and literature data are very uncertain. In this work, the complexation of Cu(I) with penicillamine was studied successfully by potentiometric titration using techniques specially developed for the stabilisation of Cu(I) in aqueous media. The formation constants were included in an improved computer simulation, in which redox equilibria are taken into account. The blood plasma models used to investigate the therapeutical effect of penicillamine on Wilson's disease showed that the mechanism of copper removal by penicillamine is unlikely to depend on complexation alone.
