Electrokinetic chromatography for drug analysis. Separation and determination of cefpiramide in human plasma

Electrokinetic chromatography using a fused silica capillary and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) solution has been applied to the separation and determination of cefpiramide (CPM) in human plasma with the use of antipyrine (AP) as an internal standard. A plasma sample was introduced into the capillary by siphoning. The calibration plot for CPM in plasma sample showed good linearity in the concentration range over 10 to 300 micrograms/ml. This method has advantages over usual high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) in that it needs only a very small volume (less than 10 nl) of plasma without pretreatment, and an extremely high separation efficiency (10 times or much higher plate number than usual HPLC) is obtained. The addition of SDS to the supporting electrolyte solution enabled (1) rapid release of protein-bound drug which allowed the total concentration to be determined, (2) reproducible results to be obtained by suppressing adsorption of protein onto the fused silica capillary and (3) rapid separation of drug from proteins by selective retardation of protein peaks.