Preliminary studies about the occurrence of histamine in seaweed from Ceará State, Brazil.
Authors
José Mourão
Universidade Federal do Ceará
Kelma Pires
Universidade Federal do Ceará
Márcia Sousa
Universidade Federal do Ceará
Francisco Viana
Universidade do Estado do Rio Grande do Norte
Silvana Saker-Sampaio
Universidade Federal do Ceará
Keywords:
Detection, HPLC, histamine
Abstract
Histamine is a primary amine formed from microbial decarboxylation of L-histidine. Consumption of food containing high levels of histamine might induce an intoxication known as histaminic poisoning. Histamine occurs in a wide range of land plants, but has been reported in a very limited number of marine algae. In this paper, fifteen marine macroalga species were collected at Guajiru beach, Trairi-CE. The presence of histamine was investigated using RP-HPLC. Standard solution of histamine showed a retention time of 8.24 ± 0.05 min (n = 15). Chromatography of Botryocladia occidentalis and Criptonemia crenulata presented a component with approximately the same retention time as histamine, 8.26 ± 0.03 min and 8.27 ± 0.03 min, respectively. For the other species, chromatograms did not show a component similar to histamine.
