Development and Validation of a High-Performance Liquid Chromatography Method for the Determination of Histamine in Fish Samples Using Fluorescence Detection with Pre-column Derivatization

Histamine level determination in fish and fish products is important for human safety, fish quality and food industry. For this reason, a rapid, robust, and precise method is needed. To achieve this objective, an HPLC method with fluorescence detection was developed and validated. Histamine in fish samples was efficiently extracted with perchloric acid, and purified with ion-exchange solid-phase extraction cartridge. A pre-column derivatization was adopted with ortho-phthalaldehyde (OPA) in the presence of the reducing agent 2-mercaptoethanol, and the stability of the histamine-OPA derivatives was achieved with the acidification of the reaction medium. In terms of validation, besides the excellent linear correlations, satisfactory recoveries at all spiking levels ranging between 0 and 200 mg kg−1 were attained, with limit of detection calculated at 1.8 mg kg−1, whereas limit of quantification determined at 5 mg kg−1. The proposed method was successfully used in the analysis of reference materials and proficiency tests, and was found to be suitable, accurate, and rapid for detection and quantification of histamine in various fish samples.