Simultaneous analysis of mercury and selenium species including chiral forms of selenomethionine in human urine and serum by HPLC column-switching coupled to ICP-MS

摘要

The simultaneous speciation of elements is of great concern, especially in the study of the interactions ofnspecies in living organisms. Here we report a method based on the coupling of HPLC-ICP-MS that isncapable of separating and analyzing different selenium and mercury species (Se-methylselenocysteine,nselenite, selenate, L-selenomethionine, D-selenomethionine, methylmercury and inorganic mercury).nThe proposed method uses two different mobile phases that are suitable for selenium and mercurynspeciation and leads to a successful determination of all the species in less than 27 min with goodnefficiency and resolution. The method was efficiently applied for simultaneous speciation of mercurynand selenium in urine and in serum, the latter from umbilical cord samples. Selenocystine has beennsuccessfully identified in the former sample. Detection limits obtained were between 0.30 and 2.46 ng.nRecovery studies of samples spiked with all species were performed to check the reliability of thenmethod, and satisfactory recoveries (93–110%) were obtained in all cases. The relative standardndeviations (RSDs) for species with ten replicate determinations of 80 mg Lu00021 were between 4.5 and 9.2%.nThe proposed method offers a deeper insight into selenium and mercury interactions in the humannbody.