HPLC separates a sample by pushing it at high pressure through a column packed with fine particles. Different compounds travel at different speeds, so each leaves the column at its own “retention time”, where a detector measures it. The detector matters: optical, electrochemical and fluorescence detectors measure a signal, while a mass spectrometer (LC-MS) also identifies molecules by mass.
Several studies the journal cites relied on it. A 1997 human study measured psilocin and its metabolite 4-hydroxyindole-3-acetic acid in plasma by HPLC with electrochemical detection (Hasler et al., 199700014-9)). A 2019 rat study identified DMT in brain samples by retention time against reference standards and natural fluorescence, not by mass spectrometry (Dean et al., 2019).
Method choice affects how far a result can be trusted and compared. Identification by retention time alone is weaker than mass-spectrometric confirmation; the 2022 mushroom survey, for instance, used UHPLC with tandem mass spectrometry (Gotvaldová et al., 2022). Studies of mushroom content also report results in different units, which makes their figures hard to line up. A number from one lab describes one sample, measured one way.
Sources
- Hasler et al., 1997, Pharmaceutica Acta Helvetiae: psilocin by HPLC-ECD
- Dean et al., 2019, Scientific Reports
- Gotvaldová et al., 2022, International Journal of Molecular Sciences
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