Albumin adducts with nerve agents

The recent study of Williams et al (2007) found that sarin, soman, cyclosarin, and tabun phosphylate a tyrosine residue on albumin in human blood. The tyrosine adducts with soman and tabun were detected in guinea pigs receiving therapy 7 days following subcutaneous administration of five times the LD50 dose of the respective nerve agent. VX also forms a tyrosine adduct in human blood in vitro but only at high concentrations. 

Bao, Y., Liu, Q., Chen, J., et al., 2012. Quantification of nerve agent adducts with albumin in rat plasma using liquid chromatography-isotope dilution tandem mass spectrometry J. Chromatogr. A1229, 164-171. 

Recently, it became recognized that albumin is also a target for nerve agents but with a lower affinity than BuChE. Therefore, nerve agent adducts to albumin are also a valuable biomarker for nerve agent and pesticide exposure (Williams et al., 2007 Read et al., 2010 van der Schans et al., 2013 Sogorb et al., 2014). 

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