Simultaneous determination of catecholamines and related metabolites by capillary electrophoresis with amperometric detection

An electrophoretic method was developed for the determination of several important catecholamine markers, namely norepinephrine, epinephrine, dopamine, metanephrine, vanillylmandelic acid and homovanillic acid in urine samples. Under the optimum conditions, the six marker compounds could be well separated with the major coexisting interference compound uric acid within 24 min at a separation voltage of 16 kV in a borate running buffer(80 mmol/L, pH=9.48). Highly linear response can be obtained over three orders of magnitude for the above markers with the low limits of detection ranging from 1.0 ng/mL to 5.0 ng/mL(S/N=3). The proposed capillary electrophoresis with amperometric detection(CE-AD) method has been used to simultaneously determine the six catecholamine markers in urine samples of healthy volunteers and patients suffering from different diseases avoiding redundant measurements and high assay cost; and the electrochemical profiles can suggest more diagnostic information of multiple diseases, which provides a promising and convenient entry into primary diagnoses of several clinical diseases.