Determination of strychnine and brucine in traditional Chinese medicine preparations by capillary zone electrophoresis with micelle to solvent stacking

Highly sensitive square wave voltammetric method for determination of brucine in artificial urine samples based on choline chloride modified glassy carbon electrode

This paper demonstrates a highly sensitive Voltammetric sensor for determination of brucine (BRU) in artificial urine sample based on choline chloride modified glassy carbon electrode (ChCl/GCE). The simple and cost effective modification was performed by electrodeposition of choline chloride on glassy carbon electrode surface using cyclic voltammetry technique. The modified electrode surface was characterized by electrochemical, spectroscopic and microscopic imaging. The electrode yields a well-resolved peak current for the irreversible oxidation of brucine in the first scan and a pair of quasi-reversible peaks during the second scan. The CV study indicates that brucine undergoes an adsorption controlled electrochemical process with equal number of electrons and protons transfer on the ChCl/GCE. The SWV result shows that the reduction peak current of BRU at the ChCl/GCE was linear in the range of 0.001 μM-10 μM with limit of detection 8 × 10^-5 μM, limit of quantification 2.6 × 10^-4 μM and sensitivity of 116.4 μA/μM. The ChCl/GCE also showed an excellent selectivity, reproducibility and long-time stability towards the electrochemical reduction of Brucine. Moreover, the practical applicability of the fabricated ChCl/GCE was examined in order to determine BRU in artificial urine samples with recovery ranging from 95.5 to 102.7%. The validity of the developed method was confirmed by chromatographic techniques, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and the results obtained are consistent the HPLC method.

Plant Poisons in the Garden: A Human Risk Assessment

A study of the plants, and their associated poisons, in the Poison Garden at The Alnwick Garden was undertaken across a calendar year. By selecting 25 plants in the Poison Garden, we have been able to develop a single chromatographic method for the determination and quantification of 15 plant toxins by liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Chromatographic separation was achieved on a C18 column (3.5 µm, 100 × 4.6 mm) with a gradient method using water +0.1% formic acid and methanol +0.1% formic acid. The developed method was validated for precision, linearity, limits of detection and quantification and extraction recoveries. The method showed good linearity with a R2 value of >0.995 for all 15 compounds with good precision of 10.7%, 6.7% and 0.3% for the low, medium and high calibration points, respectively. The LC-MS method was used to analyse 25 plant species, as well as their respective parts (i.e., bulb, flower, fruit, leaf, pollen, seed, stem and root), to assess the human risk assessment to children (aged 1 to <2 years) in relation to the plant toxin and its respective LD50. The analysis found that the greatest potential health risks were due to the ingestion of Colchicum autumnale and Atropa belladonna. As a caution, all identified plants should be handled with care with additional precautionary steps to ensure nil contact by children because of the potential likelihood of hand-to-mouth ingestion.

Effect of mesoporous silica nanoparticles-based nano-fragrance on the central nervous system

Fragrances are widely used in our daily lives and can make us feel happy. However, traditional aromatic products release fragrance quickly and have a strong aroma. This not only worsens our scenting experience, but also severely shortens the useful life of fragrance products. In this study, nano-fragrances based on mesoporous silica nanoparticles with great encapsulation efficiency and slow-release function were designed and prepared. In addition, this nano-fragrances are applied to wallpapers. Open field tests showed that this nano-fragrance had significant stress relief and anti-depressant effects.

Simultaneous determination of five metal ions by on-line complexion combined with micelle to solvent stacking in capillary electrophoresis

A direct on-line complexion combined with micelle to solvent stacking method was proposed for simultaneous determination of metal ions by capillary electrophoresis coupled diode array detector. During the experiment, a plug of complexing agent was first injected to the inlet of capillary, followed by introducing the micelle-bound metal ions. Then the metal ions produced a micelle-to-solvent stacking effect and interacted with the complexing agent under a positive voltage. Continued application of voltage, the analytes were effectively focused and separated in the capillary zone electrophoresis. Repeatability was ranged from 1.89% to 1.94% for the migration time. The detection limits were 2.66-27.9 ng mL^-1 for Ni²⁺, Co²⁺, Cu²⁺, Hg²⁺ and Cd²⁺. Furthermore, the developed method showed a great potential for the determination of metal ions in the crayfish, beebread and Dendrobium officinale samples.

Detection limit enhancement of antiarrhythmic drugs in human plasma using capillary electrophoresis with dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction and field-amplified sample stacking method

Background: A new capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) with ultraviolet detection method has been developed and validated for the analysis of four antiarrhythmic drugs in human plasma samples. Methods: In this study, a dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME) coupled with field-amplified sample stacking (FASS) was employed for biological samples clean-up and sensitivity enhancement in CZE. Results: Under optimum DLLME-FASS-CZE conditions, enhancement factors were in the range of 157–314. The method was validated over the concentration range of 20–800 ng/ml in human plasma. Inter- and intra-day precision and the accuracy were less than 20%; the detection limits ranged from 2.5 to 4.7 ng/ml. Furthermore, the validated method was successfully applied to the detection of studied drugs in patients’ plasma samples.

On-line two-step stacking in capillary zone electrophoresis for the preconcentration of strychnine and brucine

An on-line sample preconcentration method by two-step stacking i.e., sweeping and micelle to solvent stacking, in capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) has been developed for the determination of strychnine and brucine in traditional Chinese herbal medicines. After experimental optimizations, the best separation was achieved by using 75 mM phosphate buffer (pH 2.5) with 30% methanol (v/v). Compared with normal CZE injection, 51- and 38-fold improvement in concentration sensitivity was achieved for strychnine and brucine, respectively. The calibration curve was linear in the range of 0.1-5.0 μg mL(-1) for both strychnine and brucine, with the correlation coefficients of 0.9998 and 0.9997, respectively. The limits of detection (S/N=3) for both alkaloids were 0.01 μg mL(-1). The inter-day (n=8) and intra-day (n=5) reproducibilities expressed as the relative standard deviations for corrected peak area were less than 9.5%. The method was applied to determine strychnine and brucine in two Chinese herbal medicines, with recoveries ranging from 94.2% to 105.4%. The results indicated that the method is simple, rapid, reliable, and can be applied to determine strychnos alkaloids in traditional Chinese herbal medicines.

Contemporary sample stacking in analytical electrophoresis

Sample stacking is a term denoting a multifarious class of methods and their names that are used daily in CE for online concentration of diluted samples to enhance separation efficiency and sensitivity of analyses. The essence of these methods is that analytes present at low concentrations in a large injected sample zone are concentrated into a short and sharp zone (stack) in the separation capillary. Then the stacked analytes are separated and detected. Regardless of the diversity of the stacking electromigration methods, one can distinguish four main principles that form the bases of nearly all of them: (i) Kohlrausch adjustment of concentrations, (ii) pH step, (iii) micellar methods, and (iv) transient ITP. This contribution is a continuation of our previous reviews on the topic and brings an overview of papers published during 2010-2012 and relevant to the mentioned principles (except the last one which is covered by another review in this issue).

Review of recent developments of on-line sample stacking techniques and their application in capillary electrophoresis

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) has become one of the most useful tools in separation science because of its high separation efficiency, low cost, versatility, ease of sample preparation and automation. However, some limitations of CE, such as poor concentration sensitivity due to its lower sample loading and shorter optical path length, limits its further applications in separation science. In order to solve this problem, various on-line sample preconcentration techniques such as transient isotachophoresis preconcentration, field-enhanced sample stacking, micelle to solvent stacking, micelle collapse, dynamic pH junction, sweeping, solid phase extraction, single drop microextraction and liquid phase microextraction have been combined with CE. Recent developments, applications and some variants together with different combinations of these techniques integrating in CE are reviewed here and our discussions will be confined to the past three years (2008–2011).