Role of sulfhydryls in the hepatotoxicity of organic and metallic compounds.

Endogenous sulfhydryl compounds serve a critical role in maintaining the function and viability of living systems. Glutathione (GSH) is the most abundant of these nonprotein thiols. During the past decade it has been demonstrated that sulfhydryls such as GSH also serve an important role in protecting vital nucleophilic sites in the liver from electrophilic attack by numerous classes of reactive chemicals. Organocompounds such as bromobenzene and acetaminophen which undergo microsomal metabolism yield reactive intermediates that are specifically inactivated by conjugation with sulfhydryls in the form of GSH. Thus, for organocompounds GSH is extremely important in protecting against toxic insults. More recently, other sulfhydryl compounds also have been found to serve a specific but as yet less defined role in protecting biological systems against chemically induced injury. Metals such as cadmium have a high affinity for sulfhydryls and the metal binding protein metallothionein binds cadmium with high affinity. The highly specific association of the metal with this sulfhydryl-enriched protein serves to effectively sequester the reactive cadmium ion. The central role of sulfhydryl equivalents in the detoxication of organo- and metallocompounds is similar; however, the mechanism by which this is achieved is fundamentally different.