High-performance liquid chromatographic determination of ascorbic acid in serum using paired-ion chromatography and UV spectrophotometric detection.

A method is described for the determination of ascorbic acid in serum, using paired-ion high performance liquid chromatography with UV spectrophotometric determination. The advantages of the present procedure are its short analysis time, ease of performance and sufficient reliability. With this method it is possible to determine as little as 10 pmol (2 ng) serum ascorbic acid without any risk of oxidation. Correlation between the peak response and injected ascorbic acid concentration was found to be linear from 10 to 600 pmol (2 to 110 ng). An analytical recovery of 94.5 +/- 6.0 (mean +/- SD) was found by measuring a standard amount of ascorbic acid added to a serum pool on different days. Serum ascorbic acid concentrations were higher in adults (64 +/- 10 mumol/l) than in children (57 +/- 10 mumol/l).