Capillary Electrophoresis Applied to Human Urine Analysis for Clinical Diagnosis: New Trends and Perspectives

Abstract

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is an electromigration-based separation technique that emerged in the early 90s and has been evolving since then. Over recent decades, the association of CE with new technologies and detections strategies is enhancing its intrinsic mightiness. Today, CE is a part of the main high-throughput analytical platform used for medical-related applications, together with traditional gas chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography, and fingerprinting spectroscopic methods. New strategies for assessing human disorders involve a thorough analysis of bodily fluids through said instrumentation. In this context, human urine is considered an excellent alternative, for being rich in information and easily collected with minimal inconvenience for the doners. Overall, since it is an ultrafiltrate of the human bloodstream, urine composition should be changed if any condition jeopardizes human homeostasis. Thus, monitoring the levels of biomarkers in urine by an advantageous technique such as CE can be an interesting choice for diagnostic and other clinical purposes. In this review, we will be commenting on the new tendencies and technologies applied to human urine analysis by CE over the last five years. We will be starting by commenting the applications onto target groups of molecules followed by addressing the CE feasibility for the determination of general chemical profiles through untargeted omics approaches, and finishing with the perspectives on the subject.