The metabolism of saturated nitriles, including acetonitrile, has been assumed to occur by a cytochrome P-450-dependent oxidation at the alpha-carbon, yielding a cyanohydrin intermediate which may spontaneously degrade to hydrogen cyanide and an aldehyde. However, results of studies in our laboratory suggest that formaldehyde is not a metabolite of acetonitrile. Since acetonitrile is structurally similar to iodomethane, a substrate for glutathione (GSH) S-transferases, we hypothesized that the metabolism of acetonitrile to cyanide might also occur by a nucleophilic substitution reaction involving GSH. The present studies were conducted to investigate these hypotheses and to further our study of the effects of acetone on acetonitrile metabolism. Female Sprague-Dawley rats were pretreated with buthionine sulfoximine BSO (4 mmol/kg ip, at -4 and -2 hr), cobalt heme (90 mumol/kg sc, at -48 hr), acetone (1960 mg/kg po, at -24 hr), or vehicle, and hepatocytes were isolated after collagenase perfusion of the liver. BSO reduced the cellular GSH content by greater than 80%, but did not appear to affect the metabolism of acetonitrile: the liberation of cyanide correlated with cytochrome P-450, and not GSH, concentrations. Cobalt heme depleted hepatocellular cytochrome P-450 (-45%) content, decreased cell yield and viability, and resulted in a marked reduction in the metabolism of acetonitrile to cyanide. Cobalt heme did not affect the recovery of sodium cyanide from hepatocyte suspensions. Pretreatment of rats with acetone resulted in a twofold increase in the metabolism of acetonitrile to cyanide. Addition of acetone in vitro inhibited acetonitrile metabolism, with an IC50 of 319 microM.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)