[Determination of urinary catecholamines with neuroblastoma in children by HPLC]

To develop the method of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to determine the level of catecholamines (CAs) in 24h urinary, such as norepinephrine (NE), epinephrine (E), dopamine (DA), and to apply in the diagnosis of neuroblastoma (NB).

The determination was performed in a Zorbax SB-Aq-C18 (4.6 x 150 mm, 5 microm) column with a mobile phase of 0.02 mol/L KH2PO4 solution, and with fluorescence detector. In the condition, the levels of 24 h urinary NE, E, DA were detected by HPLC in healthy children, and in children with NB.

The recovery rates of NE, E and DA were 92.20%-94.38%, 94.60%-95.85% and 88.43%-91.68%, respectively, the corresponding with-day precisions (n=6) were 5.46%, 3.96% and 4.49%, respectively, and the between-day precisions (n=6) were 6.48%, 4.67% and 5.43%, respectively. The linear scopes of NE and E were 25-800 microg/L, respectively, the linear scope of DA was 50-1600 microg/L. The least detections were 2.5, 1.5, 0.5 microg/L, respectively.

This method is simple, accurate and high specificity, and can be used for the clinical diagnosis of NB.