Quantitative analyses of α-dicarbonyl compounds in food samples by HPLC using 4-(2,3-dimethyl-6-quinoxalinyl)-1,2-benzenediamine as a derivatizing reagent

α-Dicarbonyl compounds, such as 3-deoxyglucosone (3-DG), glyoxal (Gly), methylglyoxal (MGly), diacetyl (DA), and pentane-2,3-dione (PD) have been widely studied because they are the main precursors of advanced glycation end products. In this work, an analytical procedure was developed for the determination of these compounds by HPLC-UV using 4-(2,3-dimethyl-6-quinoxalinyl)-1,2-benzenediamine (DQB) as a novel derivatizing reagent. After derivatization at pH 9.0 and ambient temperature for 30 min, these five compounds were analyzed by HPLC. The results showed that the linear correlation coefficients (R2) of the method for the five analytes are between 0.994 and 0.999 in broad concentration ranges, the limits of detection are 0.050 μM (3-DG), 0.050 μM (Gly), 0.050 μM (MGly), 0.020 μM (DA), and 0.025 μM (PD), respectively. The method was further evaluated in the analyses of many kinds of food samples employing the standard addition method with the RSDs ranging from 0.43 to 4.07% and the recoveries from 85% to 103%.