[The chemiluminescent determination of cholesterol]

A chemiluminescent method has been offered to assay the blood serum total cholesterol. The method is based on coupled enzymatic reactions in two steps: (1) esterified cholesterol hydrolysis by cholesterol esterase in the presence of sodium cholate and (2) cholesterol oxidation by cholesterol oxidase and chemiluminescent assay of the released hydrogen peroxide in peroxidase reaction with luminol and p-iodophenol. Separation of these steps results in a better accuracy of the test as against the one-step procedure. High sensitivity of the method (the detection limit being 1 mM of cholesterol in a luminometer cuvette) permits high dilutions of the serum, this essentially eliminating the admixture effects on the enzymatic reactions. The findings of the suggested method are in good correlation with those of the spectrophotometric assay of cholesterol using the KONE kit.