The analysis of Romanowsky blood stains by high-performance liquid chromatography

A high-performance liquid chromatographic procedure has been developed for separating and quantitating the components of thiazine dyes and compound blood stains. In terms of speed, quantitation, and component resolution, the assay reported here is superior to other reported chromatographic methods of cationic dye separation. The components present in commercial samples of thiazine dyes and LARCTM stain, a modified Wright-Giemsa stain, have been resolved in 25-40 min on a 5-mum microparticulate silica column using a methanol-water-glycine/acetic acid mobile phase. The mechanism of separation is demonstrated to be based predominantly upon the weak ion-exchange properties of silica.