Amine modified magnetic polystyrene for extraction of drugs from urine samples

Polystyrene is one of the best candidates as the extracting medium due to its high stability in different media and acceptable extraction capability. However, the hydrophobic nature and low wettability of polystyrene limits its application to non-polar analytes. To resolve this limitation, in this project, amine groups were chemically attached to the surface of magnetic polystyrene. The resulting hydrophilic magnetic particles were expected to be capable of extracting both polar and non-polar analytes. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) were chosen for testing the applicability of modified magnetic polystyrene according to the importance of their analysis and also their wide polarity range. Major parameters associated with the extraction procedure were optimized using central composite design (CCD) method and pH 3, extraction time of 15 min, desorption volume of 350 μL and desorption time of 4 min were chosen as optimized values. Under these conditions, figures of merit were calculated including: linear dynamic range (0.5-1000 μg L^-1), linear equation and limits of detection (0.1-3 μg L^-1). To investigate the method precision, inter-day, intra-day and synthesis-to-synthesis relative standard deviation (RSD) were studied (<12%). All studies were conducted using blank urine samples spiked with aspirin, salicylic acid, ibuprofen, diclofenac and mefenamic acid. Naproxen was chosen as the internal standard and high-performance liquid chromatography-UV-Vis (HPLC-UV) was employed for the subsequent determination after extraction. To evaluate the applicability of the method for real sample analysis, urine samples from patients under treatment were analyzed and acceptable results were obtained. The aminated magnetic polystyrene revealed superior extraction efficiency, much higher than polystyrene before functionalization. In addition, hospital wastewater sample was tested and acceptable extraction efficiencies were obtained.