Tween 20-capped gold nanoparticles for selective extraction of free low-molecular-weight thiols in saliva followed by capillary electrophoresis with contactless conductivity detection

Low-molecular-weight thiols are widely present in human fluids, and are regarded as a kind of potential broad-spectrum evaluation indicators for some clinical diseases. In this work, gold nanoparticles capped with Tween 20 were used for purification and microextraction of the main free thiols (cysteine, homocysteine, glutathione and methionine) in saliva based on Au-S bond formation. Ultrasound further sped up the releasing of the target analytes, and the releasing time needed was only 10 min, and the required sample volume was only 40 µL. The desorption solution could be directly injected for electrophoretic analysis without derivatization, and field-amplified sample stacking of electrophoretic online enrichment technology further improved the detection sensitivity. The synergistic enrichment effect made the enrichment factors of four analytes reach 1119–2067 times. This developed method was applied for the analyses of saliva samples of healthy volunteers. Acceptable sensitivity (LODs: 0.15–1.5 ng mL⁻¹) and recoveries (97.6–116%) were obtained in the saliva sample matrix. This proposed method provides an alternative for the sensitive detection of low-molecular-weight thiols in noninvasive body fluids, which has potential application prospect in the preliminary noninvasive diagnosis of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, etc.