Capillary electrophoresis determination of antihistamines in serum and pharmaceuticals

A capillary electrophoresis (CE) procedure combined with UV detection has proved useful for the quantification of the most frequently prescribed antihistamines corresponding to the ethylendiamine, ethanolamine, propylamine, piperazine and other derivative groups in serum samples and pharmaceuticals. Discussions have focused primarily on the optimisation of the separation conditions by considering the following experimental parameters: pH, pressure injection and voltage; under the criteria of maximum resolution and minimum analysis time. The optimised parameters for the determination of antihistamines were a 24 cm capillary (effective length), UV detection at 214 nm, 20 mM phosphate running buffer at pH 2.0, 2 psi s(-1) injection pressure and 5 kV applied voltage. Under these conditions, the analysis time was below 10 min. The proposed method was validated according to the International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) guidelines. The limits of detection and quantification were in the ranges of 4-28 and 40-250 ng L(-1), respectively. Intra- and inter-day precision were tested at three different concentrations of the drugs, obtaining RSD values lower than 3% in most cases. The method was robust (RSD<5.6%), simple, specific and suitable for the practical determination of antihistamines in serum samples and pharmaceuticals with high recoveries (95.7-102.9%) without interferences.