Development and validation of an HPTLC method for simultaneous estimation of excitatory neurotransmitters in rat brain

L-glutamate and L-aspartate are two major excitatory neurotransmitters in the mammalian central nervous system involved in various physiological functions. A simple high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) method has been developed for the simultaneous estimation of L-glutamic acid and L-aspartic acid in the rat brain tissue samples. The method was validated in terms of precision, reproducibility, variability, and accuracy. Instrumental precision was found to be 0.5321 and 1.1961 (% CV) and reproducibility of the method was found to be 2.612 and 2.883 (% CV) for L-glutamic acid and L-aspartic acid, respectively. The accuracy of the method was checked by the recovery study. Average recovery of L-glutamic acid was found to be 98.89% and that of the L-aspartic acid was 97.25%. The proposed HPTLC method for the simultaneous estimation of L-glutamic acid and L-aspartic acid was found to be simple, precise, reproducible, sensitive, and accurate. No doubt, this proposed method will be a useful tool for the estimation of these excitatory amino acids in the brain tissue samples and for the researchers in the field of neuroscience.