Determination of serum aluminium using an ion-pair reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic-fluorimetric system with lumogallion

Abstract

An ion-pair reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method with fluorimetric detection, using lumogallion [4-chloro-3-(2,4-dihydroxyphenylazo)-2-hydroxybenzene-1-sulphonic acid] as a ligand, has been successfully applied to the determination of aluminium in human serum. The highly fluorescent aluminium-lumogallion complex (λ(ex) 505 nm, λ(em) 574 nm) was separated on a LiChrosorb RP-18 column with an eluent consisting of 30% acetonitrile, 70% 0.02 M potassium hydrogen phthalate and 10 μM lumogallion. The proposed system offers a simple, rapid, selective and sensitive method for the determination of aluminium in serum. The detection limit for aluminium was 0.05 μg/l in aqueous solution and the limit of determination was 2.2 μg/l in serum. The recovery of the method is generally over 90%.