4640480768

126 A. ORZESZK.O, Z. KAZIMIERCZUK

ABSTRACT

This paper is devoted to organie thiosulfates, so called Bunte salts. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Hans Bunte’s birth (1848), the short bio-graphical notę was annexed. The main, historical method of synthesis of organie thiosulfate was described with some novel modifications [3-11]. In Figs 1 and 2 the generał structure of Bunte salts and the mentioned reaction are shown, respectively. Newer methods of synthesis like, for example, the addition of thiosulfate anion to alkenes or oxiranes are presented in Figs 3 and 5 [2,12, 13, 18, 19].

In the next chapter some Chemical properties of Bunte salts were described. Aąueous Solutions of these compounds are unstable. In acid medium they hydrolyse to thiols, while in basie one to appropriate disulfides (Figs 6, 7) [3, 10, 22-26], The reaction of dihalides with sodium thiosulfate leads to „double” Bunte salts carrying two thiosulfate end groups. It was found that in pres-ence of NaOH or H₂0₂ these salts give appropriate polydisulfides [8, 9], The scheme of this process is shown in Fig. 11. It was found that anodic oxidation of Bunte salts leads also to di- and polydisulfides [7].

Usually, organie sulphur compounds show strong biological activity. There are a few examples of biological studies on organie thiosulfates in the literaturę. The sodium ethylthiosulfate, originally prepared by Bunte [3], exhibits a strik-ing synergistic effect with the bacteriostatic 2-mercaptobenzothiazole against Staphylococcus aureus and tubercle bacillus [43, 44], Sodium salt of the aroma-tic 3-nitrophenylthiosulfate was reported to show strong preventivc and curat-ive activity against fowl coccidiosis [22]. Radioprotective properties of hete-rocyclic derivatives of thiosulfates were also investigated [48]. The Chemical structure of Bunte salt anions carrying a long aliphatic chain suggests their amphiphilic character. It is known that amphiphility of numerous quaternary ammonium salts is responsible for their ability to damage celi membranes. We paid our attention to the relationship between the Chemical structure and the antibacterial and fungicidal activity of a number of known and newly syn-thesised Bunte salts [7]. The results of this work are presented in Fig. 13.

Many Bunte salts have excellent technical applications described in the patents cited [42-49].