New Method for Assessment of Serum Catalase Activity

Background: The following study presents a colorimetric method for the assessment of serum catalase activity which yields precise, accurate, reproducible results and is simplified so that clinical pathology laboratories may achieve this determination without the need for special techniques. Methods: In this method, dichromate in acetic acid is reduced to chromic acetate when heated in the presence of undecomposed hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), with the formation of perchromic acid as an unstable intermediate. Hydrogen peroxide concentration is directly proportional to the concentration of chromic acetate that produced from the reaction. The chromic acetate produced is measured calorimetrically at 570 nm. Findings: The imprecision of the method was calculated by measuring the coefficient of variation, which equals to 3.4% within run and 5.9% between run. The catalase assay performed using the kinetic method yielded a good correlation (r = 0.9771). Applications: The present method characterizes by adding a correction factor to eliminate the interference that arises from the presence of sugars, amino acids, proteins and vitamins in serum.