Analytical quantification of active ingredients using HPLC

High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is used in LITE to quantify the chemical content in samples of various vector control products for quality control (QC) purposes.

LITE offers a novel miniaturised high-throughput HPLC approach (Figure 1), developed by researchers at LSTM, which is currently undergoing CIPAC validation.

Figure 1. From Walker et al. (2022) Sci Rep. Comparison between the HPLC-based CIPAC-validated methods (top) for insecticide quantification and the novel high throughput miniaturised system (bottom).

Advantages of this approach include:

• Ability of quantifying two active ingredients (AIs) simultaneously
• Miniaturised: this method uses smaller sample size and smaller quantities of solvents
• High throughput: simultaneous processing of several samples and thus reduced run times

LITE can extract and quantify insecticides contained in a variety of samples, including:

• Insecticide-treated bed nets (coated and incorporated)
• Formulations from spray tanks used for indoor residual spraying (IRS)
• Filter papers taken from walls sprayed with IRS
• Insecticide-sugar solutions from Attractive Targeted Sugar Baits (ATSB)

The table below lists insecticides with validated methodologies but please get in touch if you have bespoke requirements you wish to discuss:

Please see list of references below which report the use of the miniaturised HPLC system:

• DDT IRS: Coleman et al. (2015) PNAS
• Pirimiphos-methyl IRS: Fuseini, et al. (2020) Malar J
• Alpha-cypermethrin IRS: Goncalves et al. (2021) Trop Med Int Health; Goncalves et al. (2021) Parasit Vectors
• Pyrethroid-PBO nets: Ngufor et al. (2022) Malar J; Lukole et al. (2022) PLOS Glob Public Health
• Pyrethroid-PPF nets: Walker et al. (2022) Sci Rep; Toe et al. (2019) Malar J; Ngufor et al (2016) Sci Transl Med