Simple, Rapid, and Accurate RP-HPLC Method for Determination of Cystine in Human Urine after Derivatization with Dansyl Chloride

An accurate, simple, and sensitive reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method, with loratadine as internal standard (IS) and UV detection at 286 nm, has been developed for deterination of cystine in human urine. The major innovations of the method include use of acrylonitrile to protect cysteine from oxidization to cystine, separation of cysteine, as the dansyl derivative, from cystine, and use of isocratic elution instead of gradient elution to reduce the time and cost of serial analysis. The mobile phase was 0.05 M sodium acetate–methanol, 35:65 (v/v), adjusted to pH 3.5 with 2.5 M citric acid, at a flow rate of 1.0 mL min−1. The retention times of cystine and the IS were 16.6 and 19.9 min, respectively. The limit of detection for cystine was 0.3 mg L−1. Extraction recovery of cystine was >85.6%. Intra-day and inter-day precision (RSD) for cystine were below 4.3 and 8.5%, respectively. There was no chromatographic interference from other α-amino acids present in mammalian proteins, or from other urine components. The calibration plot for the cystine derivative was linear in the range 1–500 mg L−1 and the correlation coefficient was 0.9992. The method was validated appropriately and successfully used for determination of cystine in human urine.