SOLID-PHASE EXTRACTION AND HIGH-PERFORMANCE LIQUID-CHROMATOGRAPHY PROCEDURES FOR THE ANALYSIS OF PARALYTIC SHELLFISH TOXINS

Paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxins are produced by certain din oflagellate species such as Gymnodinium catenatum and Alexandrium tama rensis, during certain periods of the year influenced by several envir onmental factors, affecting the aquaculture industry and mainly bivalv e molluscs. HPLC with fluorescence detection is a powerful analytical technique for the analysis of such toxins; several HPLC alternatives h ave been developed in order to improve the liquid chromatographic anal ysis, but due to the complexity of the sample matrix, important work h as been focused recently on the clean-up of samples prior to HPLC anal ysis. Solid-phase extraction procedures offer advantages for this clea n-up. In this work we focus on the study of three different clean-up m ethods prior to HPLC with fluorescence detection analysis of PSP toxin s present in contaminated mussel samples; by spiking uncontaminated mu ssel samples with two different PSP toxin standards and by calculating the recovery values for these experiments. These recoveries must be t aken into account in order to quantify the exact amount of PSP toxins present in the contaminated samples. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Sc ience B.V.