Native fluorescent detection with sequential injection chromatography for doping control analysis

Sequential injection chromatography (SIC) is a young, ten years old, separation technique. It was proposed with the benefits of reagent-saving, rapid analysis, system miniaturization and simplicity. SIC with UV detection has proven to be efficient mostly for pharmaceutical analysis. In the current study, a stand-alone multi-wavelength fluorescence (FL) detector was coupled to an SIC system. The hyphenation was exploited for developing an SIC-FL method for the separation and quantification of amiloride (AML) and furosemide (FSM) in human urine and tablet formulation.

AML and FSM were detected using excitation maxima at 380 and 270 nm, respectively, and emission maxima at 413 and 470 nm, respectively. The separation was accomplished in less than 2.0 min into a C18 monolithic column (50 × 4.6 nm) with a mobile phase containing 25 mmol/L phosphate buffer (pH 4.0): acetonitrile: (35:65, v/v). The detection limits were found to be 12 and 470 ng/mL for AML and FSM, respectively.

The proposed SIC-FL method features satisfactory sensitivity for AML and FSM in urine samples for the minimum required performance limits recommended by the World Anti-Doping Agency, besides a downscaled consumption of reagents and high rapidity for industrial-scale analysis of pharmaceutical preparations.