High Performance Liquid Chromatography of Tryptophan and Serotonin Metabolites

Abstract

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter in cerebral centers and its perturbations can produce humor and behavior disorders. In addition, exploration of tryptophan and serotonin metabolism is extremely important for early detection and supervision of treatment in carcinoïd tumors. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) enabled us to separate and titrate different metabolites (5-hydroxyindolylacetic acid, serotonin, tryptophan, 5-hydroxy-tryptophan and N-acetyl tryptophan (NAT) as internal standard) in several types of biological tissues: blood, urine, brain and cerebrospinal fluid. This method is original because it connects HPLC with fluorescence in continuous flow, which allows to change the conditions of pH and buffer. This technique is highly sensitive (below 100 picograms) and very quick (ten minutes).