Chromatographic determination of aliphatic aldehydes in human serum after pre-column derivatization using 2,2′-furil, a novel fluorogenic reagent

•1,2-Di(2-furyl)-1,2-ethanedione (2,2′-furil) is described as a novel fluorogenic reagent for determination of alkanals in human serum.•The method relies on reaction of alkanals with (2,2′-furil) to form highly fluorescent difurylimidazole derivatives and then these derivatives were separated by HPLC.•The method is simple, sensitive and suitable for routine analysis of large numbers of clinical samples.

A novel, highly sensitive and selective fluorimetric liquid chromatographic method for simultaneous determination of medium chain aliphatic aldehydes was developed. The method was based on the derivatization of aliphatic aldehydes with 1,2-di(2-furyl)-1,2-ethanedione (2,2′-furil), a novel fluorogenic reagent, to form highly fluorescent difurylimidazole derivatives. The fluorescence derivatives were separated in less than 20 min on a reversed-phase ODS column using an isocratic elution with a mixture of methanol–water (80:20, v/v%). The detection limits were from 0.19 to 0.50 nM (1–10 fmol/injection) at a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of 3. This method was successfully applied for monitoring of aliphatic aldehydes in healthy human sera by a simple pretreatment procedure without interferences from serum constituents.