Preparation and evaluation of aconitine imprinted microspheres and its application to body fluid samples

To extract aconitine from body fluid samples, aconitine‐molecularly imprinted polymer microspheres with the optimum molar ratios of template/monomer/cross‐linker (1:8:40) as selective sorbents were synthesized by precipitation polymerization. Excellent retention of aconitine on the molecularly imprinted microspheres (MIMs) cartridge was achieved by optimizing the MISPE process, and the binding capacity reached 0.802mg/g, yielding an imprinting factor of 4.76. The MIMs also showed high selectivity for aconitum alkaloids, but not for other kinds of poisonous alkaloids. High recoveries (>89%) for aconitine, hypaconitine, and mesaconitine were got in spiked serum samples. The working curves show linear dependence on aconitine concentration in the range of 2.0–0.1 µg/mL, and the detection limits of aconitine, hypaconitine, and mesaconitine were 16.7, 18.3, 10.2 ng mL^–1, respectively. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013