Simultaneous determination mercury species of Su-He-Xiang-Wan in rat tissues by HPLC-CVG-AFS

Abstract

A simple and sensitive high performance liquid chromatography-chemical vapour generation-atom fluorescent spectrometry (HPLC-CVG-AFS) method was developed and validated for simultaneous determination mercury species in Su-He-Xiang-Wan (SHXW) and in tissues of rats, respectively. The species of mercury were separated by a Venusil MP-C18 (5 μm, 150 mm×4.6 mm) column with the optimized mobile phase containing 5% (w/v) acetonitrile, 0.01 mol/L L-cysteine and 0.06 moL/L ammonium acetate. The tissues of rats were freeze-dried after giving the medicine for 10 d, and then added into the solution containing 10% (w/v) HCl, 1% (w/v) sulfocarbamide and 0.15% (w/v) KCl for increasing extraction rate. The resolutions of Hg²⁺, MeHg and EtHg were 1.5 and 2.9, respectively. The detection limits of Hg²⁺, MeHg and EtHg were 2.0, 1.0 and 0.9 ng/mL, respectively. The relative standard deviation (RSD) of inter- and intra-day precisions ranged from 1.56% to 2.86%. The recovery rates of three different adding level were 87%–101% (n=6), and the RSDs were smaller than 8.2%. The results show that no MeHg and EtHg were detected in rat tissues. Only soluble mercury (Hg²⁺) was determined for the mercury species of SHXW in rat tissues.

Keywords

HPLC-CV-AFS / mercury species / rat tissue / traditional Chinese medicine / Su-He-Xiang-Wan (SHXW)

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