OBJECTIVEA highly sensitive and rapid high-performance liquid chromatography method with pre-column derivatization with 4-fluoro-7-nitrobenzofurazan was developed for determination of taurine in biological samples, including plasma, brain, and liver.

METHODSThe optimum derivatization reaction temperature was 70 °C, and at this temperature the reaction was complete within 3 min. The derivatized taurine was separated using phosphate buffer (0.02 mol/L, pH 6.0):acetonitrile (84:16, v/v) as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min, and a column temperature of 25 °C. The taurine derivatives were separated within 20 min (tR:14.5 min) and fluorometrically detected at 530 nm with excitation at 470 nm.

RESULTSThe intra- and the inter-day coefficients of variation for the method were 5.3% and 7.7%, respectively. The calibration curve was linear from 0.1 μmol/L to 30.0 μmol/L with a correlation coefficient of 0.9995.

CONCLUSIONThis method can be used to determine the taurine contents in plasma, brain, and liver from normal rats and human plasma.