Assay for taurine conjugates of bile acids in serum by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography

The purpose of this study was to develop a new high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) procedure for quantifying taurine conjugates of bile acids in serum. The technique involved three basic steps. The first removed free amino acids via solid-phase extraction of the serum. The second step involved the reaction of the extracted serum with the enzyme choloylglycine hydrolase, which liberated the taurine from the conjugated bile acids. The third step was the reversed-phase HPLC separation of o-phthalicdicarboxaldehyde derivatives of taurine. The assay provides a simple technique for determination of the total amount of taurine-conjugated bile acids in serum.