Isolation of Garlic Derived Sulfur Compounds from Urine

Abstract

Abstract Garlic has been used throughout history as a spice, food, and medicine. Much work has been done to ascertain the nutritional and medicinal value of garlic. This work presents a method to analyze human urine for sulfur compounds derived from ingested garlic oils. Capsules containing prepared garlic oils were consumed and urine collected. Following preparative thin layer chromatography, the compounds diallyl disulfide, diallyl sulfide, and dimethyldisulfide were identified by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. In addition, urine specimens spiked with garlic associated sulfur compounds had these compounds also identified. The technique was able to isolate these sulfur compounds from as little as ten and as much as 100 milliliters of urine.