Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Vol 2, Issue 4 361-368, Copyright © 1983 by American College of Nutrition

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Comparison of two separation techniques for the determination of blood mononuclear cell magnesium content

J. M. Hosseini, E. Johnson and R. J. Elin

The determination of blood mononuclear cell magnesium content may be a predictor of total body magnesium status. Separation techniques employing Ficoll-Hypaque have been used for this assay; however, Hypaque contains a significant concentration of iodine that may be toxic to the cell membrane and affect the results. We developed a different separation technique using arabinogalactan (Stractan) at concentrations of 13.0 and 17.7%. The blood from 16 normal volunteers was divided and assayed for mononuclear cell magnesium content using both methods. The results (mean +/- standard deviation) with the Ficoll-Hypaque method were 83.6 +/- 30.8 fg/cell, and with the arabinogalactan method they were 78.4 +/- 25.5 fg/cell. A paired sample t test comparing the results between the two methods gave a t value of 1.05 (P greater than .3). The purest population of blood mononuclear cells was obtained with the Ficoll-Hypaque method. Thus, these two separation materials do not have a significant effect on the blood mononuclear cell magnesium content, and the better separation of cells was obtained with Ficoll-Hypaque.