Application of high performance capillary electrophoresis on toxic alkaloids analysis

Abstract

We employed CE to identify mixtures of the toxic alkaloids lappaconitine, bullatine A, atropine sulfate, atropine methobromide, scopolamine hydrobromide, anisodamine hydrobromide, brucine, strychnine, quinine sulfate, and chloroquine in human blood and urine, using procaine hydrochloride as an internal standard. The separation employed a fused-silica capillary of 75 microm id x 60 cm length (effective length: 50.2 cm) and a buffer containing 100 mM phosphate and 5% ACN (pH 4.0). The sample was injected in a pressure mode and the separation was performed at a voltage of 16 kV and a temperature of 25 degrees C. The compounds were detected by UV absorbance at wavelengths of 195 and 235 nm. All the ten alkaloids were separated within 16 min. The method was validated with regard to precision (RSD), accuracy, sensitivity, linear range, LOD, and LOQ. In blood and urine samples, the detection limits were 5-40 ng/mL and linear calibration curves were obtained over the range of 0.02-10 microg/mL. The precision of intra- and interday measurements was less than 15%. Electrophoretic peaks could be identified either by the relative migration time or by their UV spectrum.

Recent advances in the applications of CE to forensic sciences (2005–2007)

“…CZE in 100 mM phosphate pH 4 containing 5% (v/v) ACN with diode array detection (recording simultaneously UV signals at 195 and 235 nm) proved also effective for the determination of a broad range of toxic alkaloids (namely: lappaconitine, bullatine A, atropine, scopolamine, anisodamine, brucine, strychnine, quinine and chroroquine) in blood and urine, after SPE extraction and field-amplified sample stacking (FASS) injection [18]. Peak identification was based not only on the relative migration times (using procaine as the IS), but also, on peak ratios at 195 and 235 nm wavelengths.…”

Rapid and sensitive determination of strychnine and brucine in human urine by capillary electrophoresis with field‐amplified sample stacking

“…To monitor therapeutic use and control illegal use of strychnine and brucine, several methods for the determination of these drugs have been reported, including HPLC (Gu et al, 1997; et Vinek et al, 1986), liquid chromatography-electrospray mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI/MS; Choi et al, 2004), gas chromatography (GC; Vinek et al, 1986;Akira et al, 1995), GC-mass spectrometry (GC-MS; Marques et al, 2000;Rosano et al, 2008;Palatnick et al, 1997), thin-layer chromatography (TLC; Ding and Zhang, 1993) and CE (Feng and Li, 2002;Feng et al, 2003;Zong and Che, 1995;Chen et al, 2000;Zhang et al, 2007;Li et al, 2006;Wang et al, 2006;Zang et al, 2007;. However, some real disadvantages, which limit universal application and general use in the laboratory at the primary level, still exist in these methods, such as long separation time, poor separation efficiency and high cost.…”

“…In recent years, CE has been introduced as a new and different separation technique, showing original characteristics in terms of separation mechanisms, separation efficiency, etc. In the literature some workers have adopted capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE; Feng and Li, 2002;Feng et al, 2003;Zong and Che, 1995;Chen et al, 2000;Zhang et al, 2007;Li et al, 2006) with either UV or MS detection for the determination of strychnine and brucine in both Chinese medicines and biological samples, but the analysis time is long (Feng and Li, 2002;Feng et al, 2003;Zhang et al, 2007) and the sensitivities are relatively low (Feng and Li, 2002;Feng et al, 2003;Zong and Che, 1995;Chen et al, 2000;Zhang et al, 2007;Li et al, 2006). .…”

Simultaneous Determination of Strychnine, Brucine, Strychnine N-Oxide and Brucine N-Oxide in Crude and Fermented Nux Vomica by CZE with Ephedrine Hydrochloride as an Internal Standard

“…With the advantages of shortened development time, low operating costs and solvent consumption, high separation efficiency and analysis buffer with limited chromophores, capillary electrophoresis (CE) is recognized by regulatory authorities and developing quickly and has proved to be a powerful technique for analysis of pharmaceutical products [13]. In recent years, CZE [14][15][16][17][18][19][20] and non-aqueous CE (NACE) [21,22] have been used to quantitate alkaloids in nux vomica, but only for analysis of alkaloids (1,2). To the best of our knowledge, CZE separation of all the four alkaloids for assessment of the contents has not been reported yet.…”