Method of Determination of 9-(Alkylthio)Acridines in Urine by Capillary Liquid Chromatography

Reversed-phase capillary liquid chromatography was applied for quantification of thioderivatives of acridine. Ten 9-(alkylthio)acridines, three containing and seven lacking amino groups, were analyzed on Nucleosil C₁₈ with acetonitrile-water-triethylamine (90.0:9.0:1.0, v/v/v) mixture as the mobile phase. The presence of triethylamine in the eluent greatly improved the peak shape and markedly shortened the analysis time. Calibration curves of all the studied acridine derivatives were measured over a concentration range of 1.0·10^?6 – 1.0·10^?3 mol. L^?1 at two parallel detection wavelengths, 265 and 270 nm. Detection and quantification limits were evaluated for all the derivatives. The detection limits were in the region of μmol. L^?1 for most of the thioacridines. The calibration curves were used for quantification of the derivatives in human urine. No pretreatment of the real biological samples was necessary. The optimized CLC method enabled a good separation of the individual thioacridines from other compounds present in human urine samples and their quantification in a reasonable analysis time.