High-performance liquid chromatographic determination of aliphatic thiols with aroylacrylic acids as fluorogenic precolumn derivatization reagents.

The use of the methyl ester of 4-(6-methoxynaphthalen-2-yl)-4-oxo-2-butenoic acid as a fluorogenic labelling reagent for the high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) of biologically important thiols (glutathione, cysteine, acetylcysteine, homocysteine, cysteamine, sodium 2-mercaptoethanesulphonate and thiola) was investigated. The compound reacts selectively and rapidly (10 min at ambient temperature and pH 7.5) with the thiols to give fluorescent adducts that can be separated by reversed-phase HPLC and detected fluorimetrically (lambda em = 450 nm; lambda em = 310 nm). Applications to the determination of L-cysteine and mesna in pharmaceutical formulations are described.