Determination of urinary glucuronide conjugates by high-performance liquid chromatography with pre-column fluorescence derivatization.

A simple and highly sensitive high-performance liquid chromatographic method for the direct determination of urinary glucuronide conjugates is described. The method is based on the direct derivatization of the glucuronic acid moiety in glucuronide conjugates with 6,7-dimethoxy-1-methyl-2 (1 H)-quinoxalinone-3-propionylcarboxylic acid hydrazide. The derivatization reaction proceeds in aqueous solution in the presence of pyridine and 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)carbodiimide at 0-37 degrees C. The resulting fluorescent derivatives are separated on a C18 column using methanol-acetonitrile-0.5% triethylamine in water (1:1:2, v/v) as mobile phase, and are detected spectrofluorimetrically at 445 nm with excitation at 367 nm. The detection limits (signal-to-noise ratio = 3) for the glucuronides are 13-48 fmol for an injection volume of 10 microliters (130-480 fmol per 5 microliters of human urine). The method was applied to the measurement of etiocholanorone-3-glucuronide and androsterone-3-glucuronide in human urine. The method is simple and rapid without conventional liquid-liquid extraction of the glucuronides from urine.