Limits of detection of carbon-13 labelled drugs and their metabolites in human urine

The precise isotopic analysis of carbon by means of differential comparison of CO2 samples is applied to neutral, acid c and basic extract fractions of human urine. It is shown that the standard deviation of the analytical procedure, including sample preparation steps, is about 1% or 0.001 atom % excess carbon‐13, but depends some what on the fraction considered. Day to day variations (expressed as standard deviations) in the isotopic composition of the urine fractions are generally less than 2.8%, 1.4% and 3.9% for the neutral, acidica and basic fractions, respectively, although the effect of unusual dietary inputs can be recognized. The ingestion of 23 μg excess carbon‐13 in the form of isotopically labelled aspirin is shown to perturb significantly the isotopic composition of the acidic urine fraction which, for a 24 hour collection period, had a mass of 570 mg C. Because only 0.01% of the fraction was consumed by isotopic analysis, further extensive analysis would be possible. It is concluded that carbon‐13 tracer experiments generally should be arranged to provide at least 5 × 10−5 g excess 13C/g carbon in any fraction which is to be used for lable detection.