High Resolution Separation of Urinary Organic Acids by High Performance Liquid Chromatography

Reverse phase, anion exchange, and two-dimensional HPLC techniques were studied in order to increase resolution of organic urinary acids for eventual quantitative measurements. Reverse phase HPLC with a phosphate buffer/acetonitrile gradient yielded a separation of over 85 components in forty minutes and a peak area reproducibility of better than 5%. Connecting two reverse phase columns together resulted in the separation of 110 components. Anion exchange chromatography was determined to be of little use in resolving urinary acids in a resonable time except as the first stage in two-dimensional chromatography where fractions from the anion exchange column were injected into a reverse phase column. Over 139 components were separated by this two-dimensional method.