Novel Approach to Enrich Nicotine in Plasma for Rapid High Performance Liquid Chromatographic Analysis Using Three-Phase Hollow Fiber Based Liquid Phase Microextraction

Abstract

A novel method for fast determination of nicotine in plasma was established by using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with a three-phase hollow fiber based liquid phase microextraction (TP-HF-LPME) technique for sample preparation. The microextraction was mediated by the pH difference between the environment inside and outside of an organic phase immobilized in the pores formed in the wall of a polypropylene hollow fiber. The pH value of the medium outside the organic phase was adjusted by adding a dilute KOH solution to form a basic donor phase while the pH value of the inner media was set to pH 3 to form an acceptor phase using a 10 mmol/L KH2PO4 solution. On working conditions, neutral nicotine molecules were firstly extracted from the original sample solution to the organic phase, and then the analyte was extracted from the organic phase to the acceptor phase. After described extraction time, 4 microL of acceptor phase was withdrawn and directly injected into HPLC system for analysis. Parameters related to TP-HF-LPME (organic solvent, pH of acceptor and donor phase, stirring rate, salt effect, methanol content in acceptor phase and extraction time) were also optimized experimentally. The proposed method integrates extraction, enrichment and clean-up into a single step, dramatically simplifying the traditional procedure to prepare a liquid sample with complex matrices such as plasma. It has been demonstrated to be a very fast, effective and virtually "green" sample preparation technique, which provided a good linear range (0.1 - 50 mg/L) with Nu of 0.999 6, a low detection limit (0.05 mg/L, S/N = 3) and a satisfactory relative standard deviation (< 5%).