Rapid and simple analysis of bioactive amines in italian wines by rp-hplc-uv

Bioactive amines are nitrogenous compounds that can be categorized by their formation pathway and biological functions. When formed by microbial enzymatic decarboxylation of amino acids they are called “biogenic” and have detrimental effects on health. Among these amines, histamine is the most toxic and in wine the simultaneous presence of co-factors such as alcohol and other amines (cadaverine and putrescine) can act as synergy. An accurate and sensitive method witch allows the quantitative determination of 8 non-volatile (putrescine, cadaverine, histamine, tyramine, tryptamine, serotonine, spermidine and spermine) and 3 volatiles (methylamine, ethylamine and b-phenylethylamine) amines in red and white Italian wines has been developed. After an acidification step with perchloric acid, the samples were subject to a derivatization process with dansyl-chloride without any other sample preparation. Dansylation parameters such as concentration of reagent, pH, temperature and reaction time were optimized for the dansylation of amines in wine matrices. The analytes were then separated and quantitatively determined using 1,7-diaminoheptane as internal standard on a C18-RP-HPLC-UV system, water/acetonitrile gradient and detected by UV absorption at l=254 nm with a total run time of 35 minutes. Method performances were tested and good results for linearity, repeatability and recovery experiments were obtained for all the 11 amines analyzed. Obtained results have shown it that putrescine is the most abundant amine either in red and white wine, followed by histamine and tyramine; the other amines were not systematically found in the samples.