[Determination of disaccharidase activity in rat serum, bile, urine and various tissues by high-performance liquid...

A simple and high sensitive method for the determination of disaccharidase in various biological samples of rats by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with a differential refractometric detection was developed. This method, as compared with the Dahlqvist method, has the following advantages; 1) There is no necessity for the elimination of biological components which have an influence on the determination of glucose. 2) Only a little enzyme sample is used. 3) The detection limit of a reaction product, glucose, by the HPLC method is about 10 times higher than that by the Dahlqvist method. 4) The maltase activity in the small intestinal mucosa estimated by HPLC method is positively correlated with that estimated by the Dahlqvist method (r = 0.9661, p less than 0.001, n = 8). 5) This method developed in the present study is applicable to not only the small intestinal mucosa, but also serum, bile, urine and various tissues.