Fluoroethanol, alcohol dehydrogenase

Fluoroethanol itself is innocuous towards a variety of tissue constituents, a series of enzymes in rat-liver mince, and the respiration and metabolism in liver, kidney, heart and brain slice.3 After a period of incubation in those tissues known to contain alcohol dehydrogenase, e.g. liver and kidney, the respiration and pyruvate oxidation were strongly inhibited. Likewise, following a period of incubation with yeast, acetate oxidation was blocked. These inhibitions were similar to those produced by fluoroacetate, and the facts can best be explained by the oxidation of fluoroethanol to fluoroacetic acid by alcohol dehydrogenase. 

Fluoroethanol, in contrast to ethanol, is only weakly oxidized by purified alcohol dehydrogenases, the rate being one-tenth to one-twentieth. Nevertheless, this rate appears sufficient to produce a typical fluoroacetate poisoning. A fairly long lag period in the development of the fluoroacetate symptoms possibly masks the time required for oxidation of fluoroethanol. 

A variety of alcohols, in addition to methanol and ethanol, are oxidized in mammalian species among these are butanol, fluoroethanol, cyclohexanol, and 2-phenylethanoL These oxidations are catalysed by alcohol dehydrogenase which is localized in the soluble fraction of mammalian liver, lung, and kidney. 

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