Quantitative determination of 5-hydroxyindole-3-acetic acid in body fluids by high-performance liquid chromatography

A method for the quantitative determination of 5-hydroxyindole-3-acetic acid in urine and cerebrospinal fluid is described. The method is based on reversed phase high-performance liquid chromatography and fluorometric detection. The experimental error was below 5% in urine and 8% in cerebrospinal fluid. Urine and cerebrospinal fluid samples were analysed both by the described method and by a mass fragmentographic method. The correlation coefficients for the two methods were 0.986 in the urine samples and 0.965 in the cerebrospinal fluid samples. Analysis of 100 samples can be achieved within 3 days. The described method offers a possibility to determine 5-hydroxyindole-3-acetic acid in urine and cerebrospinal fluid with the same precision and capacity as do mass fragmentography but with the use of a less sophisticated equipment.