Analysis of areca alkaloids and their conversions using CE-C4D and identification by CE-MS

As one of the four major addictive substance globally, areca nut contains areca alkaloids as its principal active ingredients, which exhibit both medicinal potential and toxic effects. In this study, a concise and effective approach was developed for the simultaneous analysis of areca alkaloids using laboratory-built capillary electrophoresis (CE) with capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection (C⁴D). The proposed method demonstrated satisfactory linearity (R² ≥ 0.995), precision (RSDs ≤ 6.56%) and quantification limits of 0.77–1.37 μM. This method has been successfully used to quantify areca products with recoveries of 92.2–110.1%. In addition, the effect of processing on the areca alkaloid content in areca nut-containing products was analyzed. On this basis, the conversions of areca alkaloids under various alkaline conditions were investigated through experimental studies and theoretical calculations. The separation parameters for CE-C⁴D were effectively transferred to CE-mass spectrometry (MS), and the above analytical results for areca alkaloids were validated by incorporating CE-MS related experiments.