The triiodothyronine thyroid suppression test requires the use of labelled 3,5,3'-trnodothyronine (T 3 ). The uptake of T 3 either by red blood corpuscles [1] or by resin [2] provides a measure for the thyroid function in hyperthyroidism and in other thyroid disorders [3,4], Recently the use of Sephadex G-25 for the separation of 131 I labelled T 3 has been described [5,6,7,8].In connection with recent work in which technetium was used instead of iodine to label amino acids, we have worked out the following methods for labelling T 3 with "Tc. Cold 3,5,3'-trnodothyronine (1-5 mg) was dissolved in 5 Ν NICCHI (0.1-0.5 ml). Either 131 I as KI or 99m Tc as HTC0 4 were used for labelling, the activities varied from 0.5 to 5 mc. Iodine or technetium were liberated either by the KI + KI0 3 method [9] or by the H 2 0 2 method [10] and the labelling was performed as described in these papers. The products obtained were separated by destination or by elution from a Sephadex G-25 column with tertiary amylalcohol saturated with ammonia [11]. The separation of the Tc-labelled fractions by the latter method is shown in Fig. 1. (Iodine-labelled products showed a similar behaviour.) By means of 700 650 600 550 500 s 450 1 400 E 350 υ 300 250 200 150 100 50 ; / J 1 τ, l·' T 3 J I 1 1 -νΊ I ! ,Ί s 20 40 60 Θ0 100 120 140 160 180 200 -Millilitres of solvent Fig. 1. A representative curve for labelling Τ, with Mm Tc, collecting by Shandon fraction collector from a Sephadex-G-25 column. Oxidation with KI/KIO, and elution with tertamyl-alcohol saturated with ammonia. Counting with a wellscintillation counter, flow rate 2 ml/min.paperchromatography we could prove that the labelled T 3 was free from radioactive contaminations. Both methods proved to be satisfactory as is seen from the results in Table 1. However, the better yield was obtained when the separation of labelled triiodothyronine with Sephadex G-25 was used. Table 1. Distribution of radioactivity over the reaction products 181J 131T 99 mT. ± 99m l J l 0 Labelled HA K I+ KIO a Preparation & T dex distillas hadex distillar tion tion 3,5,3 triiodothyronine or 23-46% Tc-diodothyronine 3 I-tyro-sineorTc-51-56% tyrosine 3,5 diiodotyrosine or 3,5 Tc-0 iodotyrosine L-thyroxine 0-25% 58% 20% 22% 57% 34% 9%
28%11%
61%Our results have been confirmed by U.V. spectrophotometry of the separated amino acids and hormones. The confirmation was based on measuring the absorption of each product, comparing the maximum and minimum extinction and matching these results with standards and starting material [12].