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A Quantitative Assay For Vanillylmandelic Acid (Vma) By Gas-Liquid Chromatography / Sherwin Wilk From The Department Of Medicine, Th Emount Sinai Hospital, New York, New York And The Department Of Chemistry, Fordham University, New York, N.Y. Stanley E. Gitlow And Milton Mendlowitz From The Department Of Medicine, The Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, New York Morton J. Franklin And Herman E. Carr From The Department Of Psychiatry, Boston University, School Of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts And Donald D. Clarke From The Department Of Chemistry, Fordham University, New York, New York, Sherwin Wilk, Stanley E. Gitlow, Milton Mendlowitz, Donald Dudley Clarke Phd

Chemistry Faculty Publications

Until the discovery of the major product of catecholamine n1etabolism, vanillylmandelic acid (VMA), by Annstrong in 1957 (1), biochemical studies of epinephrine and norepinephrine metabolism were dependent upon determination of the small quantities of these materials excreted unchanged in the urine. The methods designed to measure VMA have proved adequate to detect the gross abnormalities in metabolism usually associated with catecholamine-producing tumors (2-7), but more exact procedures are required for quantitative metabolic studies. Present spectrophotometric and electrophoretic methods are nonspecific in that they yield values for VMA that are higher than those obtained by chromatographic and isotope dilution techniques (5). …