Solid-phase microextraction for the analysis of biological samples

Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) has been introduced for the extraction of organic compounds from environmental samples. This relatively new extraction technique has now also gained a lot of interest in a broad field of analysis including food, biological and pharmaceutical samples. SPME has a number of advantages such as simplicity, low cost, compatibility with analytical systems, automation and the solvent-free extraction. The last few years, SPME has been combined with liquid chromatography and capillary electrophoresis, besides the generally used coupling to gas chromatography, and has been applied to various biological samples such as, e.g., urine, plasma and hair. The objective of the present paper is a survey of the application of SPME for the analysis of biological samples. Papers about the analysis of biologically active compounds are categorised and reviewed. The impact of SPME on various analytical fields (toxicological, forensic, clinical, biochemical, pharmaceutical, and natural products) is illustrated. The main features of SPME and its modes are briefly described and important aspects about its application for the determination of pharmaceuticals, drugs of abuse and compounds of clinical and toxicological interest are discussed. SPME is compared with other sample pretreatment techniques. The potential of SPME and its main advantages are demonstrated. Special attention is paid to new trends in applications of SPME in bioanalysis. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.