Determination of adenine nucleotides and inosine in human myocard by ion-pair reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography.

An isocratic high-performance liquid chromatographic system for the quantitation of AMP, ADP and ATP is presented. The separations were achieved at room temperature by reversed-phase chromatography (Supelcosil LC-18). The standard solvent was 220 mM potassium phosphate, pH 6.9, 1% (v/v) methanol and 0.3 mM tetrabutylammonium hydrogen sulphate. A selective retention of the adenine nucleotides as a group relative to the mono-, di- and triphosphates of guanosine, uridine and cytidine was observed under these experimental conditions. The adopted procedure was applied to the separation of adenine nucleotides in biological extracts, i.e., human myocard. The adenine nucleotides in an extract of myocard were quantitated in less than 20 min. Only 5-10 mg (wet weight) of myocard were needed in order to determine the energy charge of a myocardial sample. Also inosine was easily quantitated in this liquid chromatographic system.