High-performance liquid chromatographic determination of serum aliphatic amines in chronic renal failure.

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method has been introduced for the determination of aliphatic amines in serum as their 2,4-dinitrophenyl derivatives. The method has been applied to the estimation of ethanolamine, methylamine and dimethylamine in serum from patients with chronic renal failure undergoing maintenance haemodialysis. Significant differences in the levels of both methylamine and dimethylamine were obtained between normal subjects and uraemic patients both predialysis and postdialysis. After a dialysis treatment, the levels of these two amines were reduced to approximately 55% in the patient group. Their mean values, however, were found to be about six times the values of the normal group. The degree of removal of these substances during haemodialysis was smaller than those for urea nitrogen and creatinine. On the other hand, the mean ethanolamine level before dialysis was close to that of controls, and yet a 2.3-fold increase was observed after dialysis.