Basic Drug Screen and Quantitation of Five Toxic Alkaloids in Milk, Chocolate Milk, Orange Juice, and Blended Vegetable Juice

Abstract

A convenient and general method for the determination of alkaloids in processed foods and a screen for basic drugs is presented. The food matrix is removed by mixing the sample with a buffered ion-pair reagent followed by centrifugation. The alkaloids are solid phase extracted from the supernatant. The extracted alkaloids are eluted and then analyzed by HPLC using reversed phase ion-pair chromatography. The run is isocratic. A photodiode array detector allows the simultaneous collection of signals at optimum wavelengths for a series of alkaloids in the same sample. The mean percent recovery across five alkaloids in four matrices was 87%. Keywords: Foods; alkaloids; solid phase extraction; HPLC