Determination of polyamines by liquid chromatography and precolumn labelling for fluorescence detection

Procedures are described for the separation and detection of picomole quantities of putrescine, spermidine, and spermine by liquid chromatography. The polyamines are labelled by precolumn derivatization with dansyl chloride followed by reversed-phase chromatography with a methanol and water mobile phase. The derivatized polyamines are measured with a fluorescence detector using an excitation wavelength of 340 nm and emission wavelength of 515 nm. The polyamines are eluted within 12 min and 0.5 ng of each could be detected. Some preliminary data on urine samples is presented.