A rapid HPLC technique for determining levels of histamine in tears from normal and inflamed human eyes

Abstract Because of the important role of histamine in the inflammatory process, the measurement of histamine levels in tears has been considered as a possible index of eye irritancy. Histamine levels have been measured using an HPLC procedure involving fluorimetric detection after fluorescamine derivatization. Analyses, at picomole levels, were carried out in less than 5 minutes using 10 μl of tear samples collected from either normal or inflamed human eyes.