Measurement of pyruvate in blood by high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection.

Accurate measurement of pyruvate is particularly important in the detection of mitochondrial enzyme disorders. describe a simple high-performance liquid chromatography assay for pyruvate with derivatization and fluorescence detection. Between-run variation is below 4.5% and the method is linear between I and 1,200 micromol/L. The mean recovery is 101%. After sample pretreatment, the calculated pyruvate concentration proved to be stable for 15 days when samples were kept at -20 degrees C.