Determination of albendazole metabolites in plasma by HPLC

Albendazole is an antihelminthic agent belonging to the benzimidazole class and has been used successfully in the treatment of neurocysticercosis. We report here a method for the determination of the two major albendazole metabolites in plasma, albendazole sulfone and albendazole sulfoxide. The method consists of drug extraction from 500 microL of plasma previously acidified with chloroform-isopropanol (9:1, v/v) and extract purification with n-hexane immediately before chromatographic analysis. Separation of drugs and of the internal standard (mebendazole) was performed on an RP-18 column using acetonitrile-0.25N sodium acetate buffer (3:7, v/v), pH 5.0, as the mobile phase and using detection at 290 nm.