Determination of Amino Acids by Micellar High-Performance Liquid Chromatography and Pre-column Derivatization withO-Phthalaldehyde and N-Acetyl-L-cysteine

Abstract
Micellar liquid chromatography of proteic primary amino acids with pre-column derivatization with o-phthalaldehyde (OPA) and N-acetyl-L-cysteine was studied, using mobile phases containing a short-chain alcohol. The modification of pH gave a large variation of the retention as a result of the protonation of the carboxylate group of amino acids. Maximum resolution and adequate retentions were achieved with a 0.05 M sodium dodecyl sulphate/3% propanol mobile phase at pH 3. The reproducibility was lower than 1.0% at a 1 × 10−4 M concentration level and between 0.6 and 2.2% for 1 × 10−6 M. The determination of glycine, lysine, methionine and threonine in pharmaceutical formulations gave recoveries, with respect to the values declared by the manufacturers, in the 90–105% range.

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