Systematic toxicological analysis of basic drugs by gradient elution of an alumina-based HPLC packing material under alkaline conditions.

A high-performance liquid chromatographic system based on gradient elution of an alumina packing material coated with polybutadiene is presented. The chromatographic eluent is a mixture of methanol and water, both containing 0.0125M NaOH. The effluent is monitored by photodiode array detection. The system allows detection and identification of more than 130 toxicologically relevant substances (mainly basic compounds) and has already been successfully applied to screen more than 500 extracts of fresh or postmortem specimens (blood, urine, tissue homogenates, and stomach contents).