New high-performance liquid chromatographic method for the detectionof picolinic acid in biological fluids

摘要

A HPLC method is described to quantify picolinic acid in milk,bllod serum and tissue culture supernatant.The method requires very little sample preparation because acid precipitation allows total recovery of picolinic acid.High specificity and sensitivity were obtained using ion-pair chromatograpphy on a C_(18) reversed-phase column withtetrabutylammonium hydrogen sulfate as ion pairing reagent.We describe the conditions of the automated testing of multiple samples and for the detection of L-tryptophan and L-kynurenine together withpicolinic acid.This system will be utilized to elucidate the relationship betweenpicolinic aicd production and human disease.Furthermore,we rovide the first evidence of picolinic acid in human blood serum.