Measurement of formaldehyde as dimedone adduct and potential formaldehyde precursors in hard tissues of human teeth by overpressured layer chromatography.

Simple, automatic overpressured layer chromatographic methods for the parallel determination of endogenous formaldehyde in the form of dimedone adduct and potential formaldehyde generators (betaines) in hard tissues of human teeth are described together with an efficient densitometric evaluation. These simple procedures involve the special preparation of teeth and extraction of formaldehyde, of different binding force in teeth, with methanol containing dimedone, and the isolation of betaines with an aqueous solution of methanol. Copyright 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.