ABSTRACT
A sensitive and specific method for the determination of urinary homovanillic acid by gas chromatography with a capillary silica fused flexible column, WCOT, SE 30 phase, is described. Homovanillyl alcohol is used as internal standard. OH and COOH functions are derivatized in a one step reaction with the mixture heptafluorobutyric anhydride - trifluoroethanol (4:1). A linear response of the detector (FID) is obtained with injected amounts of HVA ranging from 0 to more than 1000 ng (standard injected = 400 ng). The smallest detectable level of HVA is about 1 ng, corresponding to urinary levels near 0.1 mg/24 h, or 0.5 micromole/24 h. Correlations between this method and a fluorimetric determination of HVA are studied. Usual values in normal subjects are given.
