[Analysis of carbapenems by hydrophilic interaction chromatography and its application]

A hydrophilic interaction chromatographic (HILIC) method has been developed for the determination of the four carbapenems in human urine and tap water. The parameters including acetonitrile amount, buffer concentration and pH on the retention behavior of the four carbapenem antibiotics on an XAmide column were explored and the possible HILIC retention mechanism was proposed. Good linearities were obtained over the mass concentration ranges of 0.1-250 mg/L for biapenem, doripenem and ertapenem with correlation coefficients (R2) = 0.999 9 and while it was 0.5-250 mg/L with R2 = 0.999 8 for meropenem. The limits of quantification (LOQs) of all carbapenems were 0.1-0.5 mg/L. The spiked recoveries were within 100.4%-111.9% (RSD < 1%) for urine samples and 79.6%-107.4% (RSD < 5%) for tap water samples all at the spiked levels of 5 mg/L and 25 mg/L. The proposed method is accurate, sensitive, simple and suitable for the determination of the four carbapenems in human urine samples and tap water samples.