Fluorescent tagging of physiologically important carboxylic acids, including fatty acids, for their detection in liquid chromatography

The tagging methods utilizing FL detection reagents for physiologically important carboxylic acids including fatty acids in HPLC are reviewed in terms of the tagging conditions, handling, flexibility, sensitivity, selectivity and stabilities of the reagents and the corresponding derivatives. Emphasis is given to the applications of the tagging techniques to biologically important carboxylic acids in real samples. Although many UV-labels have been developed for the determination of carboxylic acids, the tagging methods are not included in this review because recent progress in detection-oriented tagging in trace analysis by HPLC has been mainly carried out with fluorometry, and the resulting FL derivatives are also possible to monitor with the absorbance in UV-VIS regions. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.