Separation and detection of erythropoietin by CE and CE-MS

For doping control, the standard method of testing recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO) is a combination of a blood test and a urine test. The blood test is based primarily on changes in blood parameters, and the urine test employs an immunoblotting assay that includes one isoelectric focusing (IEF) separation step, two blotting steps and luminescence detection, so the whole testing procedure is time-consuming and expensive. The present review summarizes the separation and the detection of rhEPO by capillary electrophoresis (CE) as well as by CE on-line coupled with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (CE-ESI-MS). We demonstrate the usefulness of these approaches.