Hexose monophosphate shunt-stimulated reduction of methemoglobin by divicine.

Reduced divicine (2,6-diamino-4,5-dihydroxypyrimidine), an aglycone implicated in the pathogenesis of favism, reduces methemoglobin efficiently in intact erythrocytes and in hemolysates. Oxidized divicine produces the same effect when glucose or an NADPH-generating system is added to intact erythrocytes or to hemolysates. Although NADPH, NADH, and GSH have no direct methemoglobin-reducing activity in vitro, they convert oxidized divicine to the reduced hydroquinone species, which is responsible for the electron transfer to methemoglobin. Reduction of methemoglobin is optimally observed under nitrogen since, in the presence of oxygen, reduced divicine undergoes autoxidation. Several lines of evidence rule out the reduction of methemoglobin by divicine through an enzyme-catalyzed process, although it is certainly sustained by the hexose monophosphate shunt activity of erythrocytes through the generation of both NADPH and GSH. Thus, the strong enhancing effect that glucose produces on the divicine-dependent methemoglobin reduction within intact normal erythrocytes is completely absent in erythrocytes from glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase-deficient subjects. This distinctive behavior might account for the enhanced methemoglobin levels that are found both in vitro in glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase-deficient erythrocytes exposed to divicine and in vivo as a typical feature of the acute hemolytic crisis of favic patients.