Recent progress in pharmacokinetic applications of capillary electrophoresis

This review is a continuation of the previous reviews (Electrophoresis 1999, 20, 3259-3268; Electrophoresis 2001, 22, 4244-4248) to update the recent publications from 2001 to 2003 on pharmacokinetic studies using capillary electrophoresis (CE). During this period of time, CE remains as a unique analytical method for some studies, which would otherwise be limited by many factors, such as the sample volume, detection sensitivity, or separation power. It is particularly noticeable that the separation of chiral drugs in biological sample and the use of solid-phase extraction (SPE) as a simple and convenient means of sample preparation appear to become popular for CE-based assays. The use of CE for assessing complete pharmacokinetic information, however, did not show a significant growth during this period of time. In order to provide a broad range of view on how biological samples are analyzed by CE, this review will cover publications during the past two years on the use of CE for the analysis of drugs in biological fluids for general pharmacokinetic applications including drug monitoring and bioavailability studies.