The comparison of two column classification systems during the chromatographic analysis of steroids.

Nowadays, due to the availability of hundreds of brands of reversed-phase liquid chromatographic columns, the selection of suitable columns can be difficult. Therefore, a good characterization and classification system is very important. Among published papers, the classification system based on quantitative structure-retention relationships and a method developed at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven also exist. In quantitative structure-retention relationships, retention is evaluated in terms of the chemical structure of the analytes and the physicochemical properties of both the stationary and mobile phase. The second system allows to rank columns due to the values of four parameters and the calculation of specific F(KUL)-values for a reference column and to be compared with others. In this paper, the classification systems based both on quantitative structure-retention relationships and the F(KUL)-values using principal components analysis were compared. Moreover, the proposed column ranking systems have been checked in clinical practice case considering liquid chromatography determination of six steroid hormones in urine samples. Despite that the matching of both methods is not exactly the same, both classification systems provide simple, reliable and comparable results.