Matrix-free analysis of selected benzodiazepines in human serum samples using alternating trilinear decomposition...

This paper describes the development and validation of a simple and efficient bioanalytical procedure for simultaneous determination of alprazolam, clonazepam, diazepam in human serum samples using high performance liquid chromatography with photodiode-array detection, regarding a fast elution methodology in 4 min. Briefly, this method consists of a simple liquid extraction step of serum samples followed by HPLC analysis on a C18 column. After confirming the absence of matrix effect, an external standard methodology has been applied for quantification purposes. Due to the presence of serum endogenous components as uncalibrated components in the sample, the second-order calibration based on alternating trilinear decomposition has been applied on a set of absorbance matrices collected as a function of retention time and wavelengths. Acceptable resolution and quantification results were achieved in the presence of matrix interferences and the second-order advantage was fully exploited. The average recoveries for alprazolam, clonazepam and diazepam were 89.1%, 96.3% and 94.7% and relative standard deviation values for intra- and inter-day precision were equal or lower than 8.1% and 9.4%, respectively. The developed method enabled us to determine the analytes in the various serum samples in the presence of overlapped profiles, while keeping experimental time and extraction step at the minimum.