title: Liquid chromatographic method for toxic biogenic amines in foods using a chaotropic salt.
abstract: Direct separation of biogenic amines by reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) is not an easy task because their basic and hydrophilic characteristics can lead to poor retention, column overloading, peak tailing, and hence low efficiency. Rather than routinely resorting to derivatization or using classical hydrophobic ion-pair reagents (IPR), this work proposes a new RPLC method making use of the chaotropic salt KPF6 as inorganic additive to an acidic acetonitrilic eluent to remedy the difficulties. Amine retention, overload behavior, peak shape, and column efficiency were significantly improved. The use of excess KPF6 led to a very slight decrease of amine retention. Depending on amine, the dependence of the logarithmic retention factor on the volume percent of acetonitrile could be reasonably linear or quite convex. Coupled with UV detection, the method was applied to trace analysis for six biogenic, aromatic or heterocyclic amines in three types of food after a sample cleanup, as necessary, by ion-pair extraction. The reliability of the whole analysis was demonstrated to be satisfactory. The proposed method outperforms existing methods in that it eliminates the need for long and cumbersome derivatization procedures without losing sensitivity; it also represents a good surrogate for classical ion-pair chromatography (IPC) because of the desirable hydrophilicity of chaotropic salts.
authors.affiliation: Fuli Institute of Food Science, Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Agro-Food Processing, Zhejiang R & D Center for Food Technology and Equipment, Department of Food Science and Nutrition, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
authors.forename: Jian-Jun
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Zhong
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, Zhejiang Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Hangzhou 310006, China.
authors.forename: Ningbo
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Liao
authors.affiliation: Fuli Institute of Food Science, Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Agro-Food Processing, Zhejiang R & D Center for Food Technology and Equipment, Department of Food Science and Nutrition, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
authors.forename: Tian
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: Fuli Institute of Food Science, Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Agro-Food Processing, Zhejiang R & D Center for Food Technology and Equipment, Department of Food Science and Nutrition, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
authors.forename: Xingqian
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.affiliation: Fuli Institute of Food Science, Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Agro-Food Processing, Zhejiang R & D Center for Food Technology and Equipment, Department of Food Science and Nutrition, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China. Electronic address: dhliu@zju.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Dong-Hong
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D001679:Biogenic Amines / Q000032:analysis*; D002853:Chromatography, Liquid; D005504:Food Analysis / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012492:Salts / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D001679:Biogenic Amines; D012492:Salts
keywords: Biogenic amine; Chaotropic salt; Food analysis; Ion-pair reagent; Retention behavior; Reversed-phase chromatography