A Rapid and Specific Technique for the Extraction of Tyramine and Octopamine from Biological Tissues for HPLC Analysis

High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with electrochemical detection (ElCD) is a widely accepted procedure for estimation of catecholamines (Shoup, 1982), however the technique has not been applied extensively to analysis of the monohydroxy analogues of catecholamines. The infrequent use of HPLC/ElCD for determination of phenolamines is due in part to the high electrode potentials that are required to effect electro-oxidation of these compounds (Bailey et al., 1982) and to the lack of a convenient technique for extracting the monoamines from biological tissues. The constraints due to detection have recently been resolved by the use of a dual coulometric detection system (Martin et al., 1983; see also paper by Martin et al. in this volume) and the present report summarises a rapid, specific extraction procedure that affords up to 75% recovery of tyramine and octopamine from a variety of biological tissues. A more detailed description of the extraction procedure including data on factors influencing recovery will be published elsewhere.