Application of time-resolved fluorescence to the determination of metabolites

A simple fluorescent methodology for the simultaneous determination of two major metabolites of acetylsalicylic acid--salicylic and gentisic acids--in pharmaceutical preparations and human urine is proposed. Due to the overlapping between the fluorescence spectra of both analytes, the use of the more selective fluorescence decay curves is proposed. Values of dependent instrumental variables affecting the signal-to-noise ratio were fixed with a simplex optimization procedure. A calibration matrix of thirteen standards plus two blank samples was processed using a partial least-squares (PLS) analysis. To assess the goodness of the proposed method, a prediction set of nine synthetic samples was analyzed, obtaining recovery percentages between 95% and 106%. Limits of detection, calculated by means of a new criterion, were 3.49 μg L(-1) and 1.66 μg L(-1) for salicylic and gentisic acids, respectively. The method was also tested in three pharmaceutical preparations containing salicylic acid, obtaining recovery percentages close to 100%. Finally, the simultaneous determination of both analytes in human urine samples was successfully carried out by the PLS-analysis of a matrix of thirteen standards plus five analyte blanks. Although spectra of analytes and urine overlap strongly, no extraction method neither prior separation of the analytes were needed.