A simple borohydride/GC method for measuring sparteine metabolites in man.

A simple borohydride/GC method was developed for phenotyping sparteine oxidation in man. The major metabolites of sparteine found in human urine, 2- and 5-dehydrosparteine, were converted quantitatively back to sparteine by sodium borohydride reduction. The amount of sparteine metabolites can be estimated from the difference of sparteine concentrations between the borohydride-treated and untreated urine samples. The coefficient of variation of this assay was estimated from repeated analyses to be +/- 3% within a day (intra-assay) and +/- 8% between days (inter-assay).