Clinically, the ratio of lactulose/mannitol excretion in urine after administration of these non-metabolized sugars has been used to evaluate the extent of malabsorption and intestinal permeability disruption in several infections and nutritional diseases, including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. A range of methodologies have been reported to determine the lactulose/mannitol ratio, including enzymatic assay, gas-liquid chromatography (GC), thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Most published methods involve tedious sample preparations, rendering them unsuitable for routine or automated clinical laboratory testing. We describe in this paper a method in which weak anion-exchange high-performance liquid chromatography in conjunction with a pulsed amperometric detector was used. It requires very simple sample preparation and avoids interference by other components present in the urine. The linear range of determination for mannitol, lactulose and glucose are up to 10 nmol, in a single injection. The limits of detection are 8, 12, 47 and 52 pmol, respectively, for mannitol, glucose, lactose and lactulose. The separation and quantification using this method are highly reproducible, yielding standard errors of less than 2.5% for retention times and less than 3.5% for quantitation. The ratios of lactulose/mannitol recovery in controls and in HIV-infected subjects with and without diarrhea showed striking differences, which are in close agreement with the published results derived with similar HPLC methods.