An online field-amplification sample stacking method for the determination of diuretics in urine by capillary electrophoresis-amperometric detection

A simple and sensitive online field-amplification sample stacking (FASS) pre-enrichment method following by capillary electrophoresis with amperometric detection has been developed for the determination of diuretics, such as indapamide (IDP), hydrochlorothiazide (HCT) and bumetanide (BMTN) in urine. Under the optimum conditions, it was found that the low concentration buffer solution could be used as the diluents for simultaneous field-amplification injection of three diuretics after electrokinetically injecting a short water plug (15 kV, 3 s). Three analytes could be well separated within 10 min in an uncoated fused-silica capillary with H3BO3-Na2B4O7 (BB) buffer solution (pH 8.98). The detection limits (S/N = 3) were 9.0 ng/mL for IDP, 20 ng/mL for HCT and 1.5 ng/mL for BMTN, respectively. The detection limits of three diuretics were much lower by FASS than that by conventional sample injection, of which the detection limits were 340, 890 and 330 ng/mL for IDP, HCT and BMTN, respectively. Especially, for bumetanide the detection limit was 220-time lower by FASS. The linear ranges of three diuretics were all over three orders of magnitude. The proposed method has been successfully applied to analyze the diuretics in human urine samples without off-column sample pre-concentration.