A robust method for iodine status determination in epidemiological studies by capillary electrophoresis

Iodine deficiency is the most common preventable cause of intellectual disabilities in children. Global health initiatives to ensure optimum nutrition thus require continuous monitoring of population-wide iodine intake as determined by urinary excretion of iodide. Current methods to analyze urinary iodide are limited by complicated sample pretreatment, costly infrastructure, and/or poor selectivity, posing restrictions to large-scale epidemiological studies. We describe a simple yet selective method to analyze iodide in volume-restricted human urine specimens stored in biorepositories by capillary electrophoresis (CE) with UV detection. Excellent selectivity is achieved when using an acidic background electrolyte in conjunction with dynamic complexation via α-cyclodextrin in an unmodified fused-silica capillary under reversed polarity. Sample self-stacking is developed as a novel online sample preconcentration method to boost sensitivity with submicromolar detection limits for iodide (S/N ≈ 3, 0.06 μM) directly in urine. This assay also allows for simultaneous analysis of environmental iodide uptake inhibitors, including thiocyanate and nitrate. Rigorous method validation confirmed good linearity (R(2) = 0.9998), dynamic range (0.20 to 4.0 μM), accuracy (average recovery of 93% at three concentration levels) and precision for reliable iodide determination in pooled urine specimens over 29 days of analysis (RSD = 11%, n = 87).