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Updated: Jun 28, 2026

Sheathless Capillary Electrophoresis–Mass Spectrometry for Metabolic Profiling of Biological Samples
Published on: October 1, 2016
Determination of gamma-hydroxybutyric acid in clinical samples using capillary electrophoresis with contactless
Xiao Yang Gong1, Pavel Kubán, André Scholer
1Department of Chemistry, University of Basel, Spitalstrasse 51, 4056 Basel, Switzerland.
Abstract:
A method for the determination of gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) in urine and serum samples with capillary electrophoresis using capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection (CE-C(4)D) was developed. The optimized separation buffer consisting of 20 mM of arginine, 10 mM of maleic acid and 30 microM of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) contained 5 mM vancomycin to facilitate the separation of gamma-hydroxybutyric acid from beta-hydroxybutyric acid (BHB), which is also present in clinical samples. The detection limits in the clinical samples were found to be about 2 microg/ml, which is well below the required sensitivity for the recognition of overdosage and adequate for the determination of endogenous concentrations in urine. The determination of GHB in both types of samples was carried out directly after a fourfold dilution without requiring any derivatization or extraction procedures.
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