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A simple, rapid and specific chemiluminescence (CL) method for the determination of glutathione has been developed. The method is based on the enhanced CL of the reaction between Ru(phen)3 2+ (phen = 1,10-phenanthroline) and KMnO4 by glutathione in HCl medium. Under the optimum conditions, the response is linearly proportional to the concentration of glutathione between 1.5 × 10−7 and 1.0 × 10−5 mol L−1. The dection limit for glutathione (5.8 × 10−8 mol L−1) is about 10 and 200 times better than those of the spectrophotometric method using Ellman regent and the Lucigenin – CL method, respectively. The final procedure allows the determination of glutathione in human serum with recoveries of 92%–108%. A satisfactory agreement was obtained with a mean relative difference of 2.5% compared to the HPLC method.