Retention behavior of morphine and its metabolites on a porous graphitic carbon column

Summary

The chromatographic behaviour of a series of morphine-based opiates has been investigated using a porous graphitic carbon packing material at acid and alkaline pH. The effects of mobile phase pH, mobile phase organic percentage, column temperature and ionpairing agents were studied. All six opiates were separated within a close retention window despite large differences in measured lipophilicities of the individual opiates. The retention order was not related to the log P values of the opiates and strong retention of the fully ionised compounds was observed, particularly those with acidic functional groups. The effect of pH on the retention of the compounds indicated that the degree of ionisation of the individual compounds was important in the separation mechanism, suggesting that hydrophobic interactions were present in addition to the polar retentive effects observed above. The strong retention of the ionised glucuronide and sulphate conjugates of morphine is a particularly useful feature of the porous graphitic carbon packing material which has general applicability to the analysis of polar or ionised drug metabolites.