Development of An HPLC-UV Method for Determination of Taurine in Infant Formulae and Breast Milk

Abstract

A rapid and accurate high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) procedure was proposed for routine and selective determination of taurine in infant formulas and breast milk. The sample preparation was simple, involving protein removal and filtration operations. Afterwards, taurine was derivatised with o-phtha]aldehyde/2-mercaptoethanol prior to injection onto a reversed phase column C₁₈ (S₁₀ODS₂). Isocratic elution was carried out using 0.05 M phosphate buffer pH 5.3/ methanol (60:40) mixture. The effluent was monitored by a UV detector at 350 nm. A linear relationship was found between peak area and a concentration range of 1–70 μg/mL. The detection limit was 0.3 μg/mL. Effective separation and quantification was achieved in under six minutes. No interference of other amino acids was observed. Extensive validation of the proposed method was carried out both by the standard additions method and by comparison with a fluorimetric method of known accuracy. The precision was better than 1.4%.