Capillary electrophoresis as a tool for diagnosis of methanol and ethylene glycol poisoning from
blood samples


Pavol Ďurč^1,2, František Foret^1, Petr Kubáň^1,2


^1 Department of Bioanalytical instrumentation, CEITEC Masaryk University, Veveri 97, 602 00, Brno,
Czech Republic

^2 Department of Chemistry, Masaryk University, Kotlářská 2, 611 37 Brno, Czech Republic

Pavol Ďurč, email: durc.pavol@gmail.com


Analysis of blood samples is of particular importance, especially in medical diagnosis. During
alcohol poisoning, various toxic metabolites are formed in the circulating blood that need to be
detected early to decrease the risk for serious health consequences. A simple and rapid capillary
electrophoretic (CE) method, using contactless conductivity detection (C4D), for simultaneous
analysis of methanol (formate) and ethylene glycol (oxalate and glycolate) metabolites from a drop
of blood was developed. The separation was performed in a background electrolyte consisting of
50 mM 2-(N-morpholino)ethanesulfonic acid and 50 mM L-histidine (pH = 5.9) in bare fused silica
capillary (50 µm ID) in less than 5 minutes. We present here a new, simple device that can be used
to separate the blood plasma from as little as 5 uL of whole blood in less than a minute, using no
electric power. This may be important especially in the point-of-care analysis. The parameters of
the developed system, such as analyte recovery, plasma separation speed and capillary
electrophoresis electrolyte optimization was performed and will be described in detail.


Acknowledgment

The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (Grant
No. P206/13/21919S). This research was carried out under the project CEITEC 2020 (LQ1601) with
financial support from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic under the
National Sustainability Programme II.