1. Investigación

It is of interest to measure the short chain organic acid content in natural latex serum, and capillary electrophoresis (CE) has proved to be a good tool for this study. However, for some acids, a higher sensitivity than that provided by the standard methods was needed. Therefore, a stacking effect was optimised and applied both for standards and real samples. Large-volume injection of sample solutions prepared in low conductivity matrices containing 50% acetonitrile (v/v) and 0.5% NaCl (w/v) gave the best results with enhancement factors over 17 and recoveries ranging from 83 ± 14 to 122 ± 4%.

Short-chain organic acid contents in serum of natural latex are interesting to measure and capillary electrophoresis (CE) has proved to be a good tool for their study. In the present work a method has been developed to identify the short-chain organic acids present in sera of natural rubber latex (oxalic, formic, fumaric, aconitic, succinic, malic, glutaric, citric, acetic, glycollic, propionic and quinic acids), the separation was optimised and the quantification method validated. The separation was performed on a CE system with UV detection at 200 nm. The separation was carried out with an uncoated fused-silica capillary (57 cm350 mm I.D.) and was operated at 210 kV potential. The separation buffers were prepared with 0.5 M H PO , 0.5 mM cetyltrimethylammonium bromide and pH adjusted by adding NaOH to 6.25 except for propionic acid 3 4 which was better measured at pH 7.00. Validation parameters are adequate and limits of detection range from 0.005 mM to 1.6 mM. Short-chain organic acids were measured with this method in sera of three different types of latex.