ANALYSIS OF AMPHETAMINES BY CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORESIS AND LIQUID-CHROMATOGRAPHY - APPLICATION TO DRUG SEIZURES AND CROSS-VALIDATION

Two methods, capillary electrophoresis (CE) and liquid chromatography (LC), have been developed for the separation and quantitation of amphe tamines found in illicit drug seizures. These methods allowed us to de termine, within less than 8 min and without interference from adultera nts, the presence of six current amphetamines. No significant statisti cal differences between both validated methods were observed as linear ity, precision, accuracy and limits of detection and quantitation were similar. However, the order of elution of amphetamines and of adulter ants was different; hence, these methods proved to be orthogonal which is very convenient for forensic analysis. Further, CE and LC were app lied to the analysis of 13 seized tablets with quantitative results st atistically similar. Qualitative results were also confirmed by CC-MS procedure. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.