Development of an Analytical Method for Catecholamines with HPLC−Chemiluminescence Detection and its Application

Catecholamines (norepinephrine (NE), epinephrine (E) and dopamine (DA)) play important roles as neurotransmitters or hormones, and are known to be metabolized by catechol−O−methyltransferase (COMT) and monoamine oxidase. As shown in Figure 1, catecholamines are metabolized into their respective 3−O− methyl metabolites (normetanephrine (NMN), metanephrine (MN) and 3−methoxytyramine (3−MT)) by COMT. Catecholamines and/ or their metabolites concentrations in plasma and/or urine are used as an index for several diseases such as hypertension and pheochromocytoma. Therefore, many methods have been developed for the determination of catecholamines and/or their metabolites. Most of them adopted high−performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)− electrochemical detection or fluorescence detection. However, there are many endogenous substances in bio−samples such as plasma or urine. Therefore, these methods have been used in combination with complicated sample pre−treatment such as solid phase extraction or liquid−liquid extraction to determine catecholaFocusing Review