Simultaneous determination of salicylic acid and salicylamide in biological fluids

A new methodology for the simultaneous determination of salicylic acid and salicylamide in biological fluids is proposed. The strong overlapping of the fluorescence spectra of both analytes makes impossible the conventional fluorimetric determination. For that reason, the use of fluorescence decay curves to resolve mixtures of analytes is proposed; this is a novel technique that provides the benefits in selectivity and sensitivity of the fluorescence decay curves.In order to assess the goodness of the proposed method, a prediction set of synthetic samples were analyzed obtaining recuperation percentages between 98.2 and 104.6%. Finally, a study of the detection limits was done using a new criterion resulting in values for the detection limits of 8.2 and 11.6 μg L−1 for salicylic acid and salicylamide respectively.The validity of the method was tested in human serum and human urine spiked with aliquots of the analytes. Recoveries obtained were 96.2 and 94.5% for salicylic acid and salicylamide respectively.

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► Salicylic acid and salicylamide posses very similar fluorescence spectra.
► Biological fluids are fluorophors that usually interferes in analytical determinations.
► Conventional fluorometry is unable to resolve this mixture in biological fluids.
► We propose to combine fluorescence decays and PLS to perform the simultaneous determination.
► The obtained results show the usefulness of this new method.