Sensitive determination of illegal drugs of clenbuterol and salbutamol in swine urine by capillary electrophoresis with on-line stacking based on the moving reaction boundary

Abstract

The sensitive determination of clenbuterol (CLB) and salbutamol (SAL) in swine urine was developed by using capillary electrophoresis with a moving reaction boundary (MRB)-based stacking method. Under the optimum conditions, the MRB-based stacking procedure produced an improved concentration sensitivity of 70.5-fold for CLB and 24.7-fold for SAL. The improvement results in a limit of detection (LOD) of about 0.26 ng mL⁻¹ and 0.96 ng mL⁻¹ for CLB and SAL, respectively. The method has been successfully used for the analysis of CLB and SAL in swine urine, and the R.S.D. was less than 5.0%, the recoveries were in the range of 96.8–103.6% and the linear ranges of CLB and SAL were 0.003–10.0 μg mL⁻¹ and 0.01–20.0 μg mL⁻¹, respectively.