Simultaneous Determination of Five Alkaloid Compounds in a Drug Based on a Hydrophilic Monolithic Column by Capillary...

A novel capillary electrochromatography (CEC) method was developed by using a hydrophilic monolithic column for the simultaneous determination of five alkaloids in a drug. The monolithic stationary phase was first prepared via in situ polymerization of acrylamide (AM), glycidyl methacrylate (GMA), N,N'-methylenebisacrylamide (MBA) and 2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propane-sulfonic acid (AMPS) in a ternary porogen solvent system consisting of cyclohexanol, dodecanol and toluene. The obtained monolithic stationary phase was subsequently modified by 0.1 mol/L ammonia water for opening epoxide groups of GMA. The separation performance and efficiency of the resulting monolithic column were investigated by the use of five compounds (thiourea, aniline, naphthylamine, diphenylamine and dimethyl acetamide) by CEC. The optimized monolithic column has obtained high column efficiencies with 74,000-121,000 theoretical plates/m. Finally, the prepared monolithic column was used to separate and determine five alkaloids (piperine, nuciferine, kukoline, berberine and tetrandrine) using CEC. Under the conditions of acetonitrile/10 mM phosphate buffer solution (65/35, v/v, pH 8.5) and 15 kV applied voltage, the baseline separation of five alkaloids was achieved. The proposed method has been successfully applied to the determination of berberine in a tablet sample. The percentage of recovery of spiked tablet samples ranged from 93.4 to 108.0% with relative standard deviations (RSDs) <9.20%.