Rapid determination of sparteine and its metabolites in urine

A method is presented for the isolation, separation and determination of sparteine and its metabolites in urine. The isolation is based on rapid extraction with dichloromethane and pentane in a glass separator. For the separation and determination, capillary gas chromatography with nitrogen—phosphorous detection was used. The recovery of the method ranged from 81.6% to 94.8%, and the limit of determination varied between 0.2 and 0.5 μg ml⁻¹. For quantification, 17-ethylsparteine was used as the internal standard.