Stable isotope pilot study of exchangeable copper kinetics in human blood plasma

To develop further our understanding of initial dietary copper metabolism, a method has been developed to separate plasma copper that is bound to albumin, from that bound to ceruloplasmin. This method has been tested using plasma samples from a pilot study involving six human volunteers who consumed 3mg oral doses of the stable isotope (65)Cu and gave blood samples at timed intervals up to 7 days. The results suggest that this method can be used to monitor dynamic fluctuations in newly absorbed copper over a short time frame.