Comparison of a capillary electrophoresis method with high-performance liquid chromatography for the determination of biogenic amines in various food samples

A capillary electrophoresis (CE) and a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method to analyze biogenic amines in food were compared. An automated precolumn derivatization with o-phthaldialdehyde (OPA) allows for the determination of aliphatic amines and amino acids by HPLC. In contrast, for the measurement of histamine and tyramine by CE, no laborious sample pretreatment was necessary. The biogenic amines were separated by CE or HPLC in less than 9 or 20 min, respectively. The calibration curves were linear to at least 100 mg/kg (r=0.999) and 1,000 mg/kg for HPLC and CE, respectively, with detection limits for histamine of 0.5 mg/kg (fluorescence detector) or 1 mg/kg (diode array detector) with HPLC and 2 mg/kg with CE. The detection limits for tyramine were 1.5 mg/kg with HPLC and 6 mg/kg with CE and for further amines (e.g., putrescine, spermidine, cadaverine, agmatine) ranging from 1.0 to 8.5 mg/kg with HPLC. There was a good correlation between CE and HPLC (correlation coefficient for histamine: 0.994).