A method for the separation of glycine-conjugated bile acids as a group from taurine-conjugated bile acids.

Ileal disease, liver disease, and other pathologic conditions have been shown to affect the glycine:taurine ratio (1). The procedure used for determining the glycine:taurine ratio is to separate the individual conjugated bile acids on thin-layer chromatograms and estimate the quantities of each bile acid to get the ratio (2, 3). Sometimes two or more solvent systems are needed to separate the individual bile acids for this purpose (4, 5). Recently, a nonchromatographic calorimetric method has been reported for the estimation of taurine-conjugated bile acids (6). The glycine:taurine ratio by this method is determined by estimating the total conjugated bile acids after separation on thin-layer chromatograms and finding the difference between total and taurine conjugates, giving the value of glycine conjugates and thereby the ratio. All of these methods are time consuming and laborious. The method described here separates all of the glycine-conjugated bile acids in one band and the taurine-conjugated bile acids in another, thus separating the glycine derivatives from taurine derivatives on the same plate in a single run. The bile acids are close together in each band to permit recovery from the chromatograms for quantitative analysis.