Determination of histamine and its metabolic products in the pig gastric mucosa.

This paper describes analytical techniques for quantitative and qualitative determination of histamine and its metabolites (N tau-methylhistamine, N alpha-methylhistamine and N alpha, N alpha-dimethylhistamine) in the pig gastric mucosa. These metabolites and N alpha-acetylhistamine, imidazolyl-4-acetic acid and N tau-methylimidazolylacetic acid were synthesized as reference compounds and analyzed by using the dansylation technique. TLC of dansylated mucosal extracts in various solvents (in situ fluorescence measurements) in combination with TLC/IR and TLC/MS transfer technique demonstrated the presence of histamine. The only metabolite was N tau-methylhistamine.