Limits of detection of carbon-13 labelled drugs and their metabolites in human urine.

Abstract

The precise isotopic analysis of carbon by means of differential comparison of CO2 samples is applied to neutral, acid c and basic extract fractions of human urine. It is shown that the standard deviation of the analytical procedure, including sample preparation steps, is about 1% or 0.001 atom % excess carbon-13, but depends some what on the fraction considered. Day to day variations (expressed as standard deviations) in the isotopic composition of the urine fractions are generally less than 2.8%, 1.4% and 3.9% for the neutral, acidica and basic fractions, respectively, although the effect of unusual dietary inputs can be recognized. The ingestion of 23 μg excess carbon-13 in the form of isotopically labelled aspirin is shown to perturb significantly the isotopic composition of the acidic urine fraction which, for a 24 hour collection period, had a mass of 570 mg C. Because only 0.01% of the fraction was consumed by isotopic analysis, further extensive analysis would be possible. It is concluded that carbon-13 tracer experiments generally should be arranged to provide at least 5 × 10−5 g excess 13C/g carbon in any fraction which is to be used for lable detection.