Capillary electrophoresis for simultaneous analysis of heparin, chondroitin sulfate and hyaluronic acid and its application in preparations and synovial fluid

A simple and accurate capillary electrophoresis (CE) method was developed to simultaneously separate and quantify heparin, chondroitin sulfate and hyaluronic acid. The relative standard deviations (intra-day) of migration time, peak height and peak area for heparin, chondroitin sulfate and hyaluronic acid were lower than 1.11, 5.45 and 2.82%, respectively. The limits of detection of heparin, chondroitin sulfate and hyaluronic acid were 0.91, 0.12 and 9.04 × 10(-3) mg/mL, respectively. The developed electrophoretic method was successfully applied to the analysis of commercial drug products and biological samples containing chondroitin sulfate and/or hyaluronic acid. The recoveries for chondroitin sulfate and hyaluronic acid were in the range of 95.9 ~107.0%. This was the first time the content of hyaluronic acid in the synovial fluids from osteoarthritic rabbits was investigated by CE. The results suggested that hyaluronic acid in the synovial fluids from osteoarthritic rabbits may be further metabolized and the administration of chondroitin sulfate or hyaluronic acid could affect the content and metabolism of hyaluronic acid in the synovial fluids. The developed CE method was simple to implement without sample pretreatment such as depolymerisation, very repeatable and easily transferred from lab to lab.