Direct determination of barbiturates in urine by capillary electrophoresis using a capillary coated dynamically with polycationic polymers

A new, simple and rapid capillary electrophoresis method, using hexadimethrine bromide (HDB) as electro-osmotic flow modifier, has been developed for the identification and determination of nine barbiturates, barbital acid, barbital, phenobarbital, pentobarbital, amobarbital, thiobarbituric acid, butobarbital, N-methyl-5-phenyl-ethyl barbital acid and 5-cyclohexenyl-5-ethyl barbital acid in urine with UV detection at 200 nm. The applied voltage was -25 kV and the capillary temperature was kept constant at 25 degrees C. The effects of buffer pH, the concentration of HDB and the concentration of alpha-cyclodextrin were studied systematically. Optimum separation was achieved with 20 mM borate buffer at pH 10.00 containing 0.04% (w/v) HDB and 2.06 mM alpha-cyclodextrin. Regression equations revealed good linear relationship between the peak area of each compound and its concentration. The correlation coefficients were from 0.9990 to 0.9997. The relative standard deviations of migration times and peak areas were < 3.84 and 5.45% (intra-day). The nine barbiturates in urine were successfully determined within 7 min, without a prior preparation step and the method is useful for the investigation of intoxication.