Arsenic speciation of Niuhuang Jiedu Tablets in water and gastrointestinal fluids by HPLC-ICP-MS / 中国药学杂志

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the arsenic speciation of Niuhuang Jiedu Tablets (traditional Chinese medicines) in water and gastrointestinal fluids by HPLC-ICP-MS, so as to quantitatively evaluate the arsenical toxicity of Niuhuang Jiedu Tablets. METHODS: An HPLC-ICP-MS method for the determination of AsIII, AsV, MMA, DMA and the identification of AsB and AsC was established, and the arsenic speciation of Niuhuang Jiedu Tablets in water, gastric fluid, and intestinal fluid was determined and analyzed. RESULTS: The method validation indicated that the correlation coefficients (r) for As, As, MMA, and DMA were all over 0.9994, the limits of quantitation (LOQ) were between 0.66 and 1.19 μg · L-1, the precisions and stabilities were satisfactory with all RS-Ds less than 5%, and the spiked recoveries ranged from 92.78% to 100.2%. The results of samples analysis showed that only inorganic arsenic (As and As) and trace amount of unknown arsenic speciation were detected, while MMA, DMA, AsB, and AsC were not found in any cases; highly toxic inorganic arsenic (As and As) were dominating arsenic speciation of Niuhuang Jiedu Tablets in water and gastrointestinal fluids. CONCLUSION: This method could be used for the arsenic speciation analysis of Niuhuang Jiedu Tablets in water and gastrointestinal fluids.