Very small injected samples to study chloroquine and quinine in human serum using capillary-LC and native fluorescence

HPLC methods for choloroquine determination in biological samples and pharmaceutical products

OBJECTIVE

Review and assess pharmaceutical and clinical characteristics of chloroquine including high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-based methods used to quantify the drug in pharmaceutical products and biological samples.

EVIDENCE ACQUISITION

A literature review was undertaken on the PubMed, Science Direct, and Scielo databases using the following keywords related to the investigated subject: 'chloroquine', 'analytical methods', and 'HPLC'.

RESULTS

For more than seven decades, chloroquine has been used to treat malaria and some autoimmune diseases, such as lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis. There is growing interest in chloroquine as a therapeutic alternative in the treatment of HIV, Q fever, Whipple's disease, fungal, Zika, Chikungunya infections, Sjogren's syndrome, porphyria, chronic ulcerative stomatitis, polymorphic light eruption, and different types of cancer. HPLC coupled to UV detectors is the most employed method to quantify chloroquine in pharmaceutical products and biological samples. The main chromatographic conditions used to identify and quantify chloroquine from tablets and injections, degradation products, and metabolites are presented and discussed.

CONCLUSION

Research findings reported in this article may facilitate the repositioning, quality control, and biological monitoring of chloroquine in modern pharmaceutical dosage forms and treatments.

In Vitro and In Vivo Evaluation of Two Hydroxychloroquine Tablet Formulations: HPLC Assay Development

The relative in vitro and in vivo evaluation of two hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) products was conducted. In vitro studies involved assay, content uniformity and dissolution test, and a two-way crossover fashion were used for in vivo studies. Blood samples were collected at appropriate intervals and HCQ levels were measured using a validated reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method. The drug and the internal standard, chloroquine (CQ), were extracted from blood with diethyl ether, separated and dried under nitrogen gas. Residues were reconstituted in the mobile phase and analyzed at 340 nm on a μ-bondapack C18 (250 × 4.6 mm) HPLC column with acetonitrile:methanol:KH2PO4 (10:10:80) mixture containing 0.01% triethylamine. The standard curve was linear within 50-1,500 ng/mL HCQ (R2 = 0.9996), relative errors were 1.6 to 5%, and the CV% ranged from 7 to 15.4. The resolution factor and RSD were 1.62 and 0.35% and in vitro data of both products met the USP requirements. The 90% confidence intervals for the ratios of the AUC0-96, Cmax and Tmax and their corresponding logarithmically transformed values of generic product over those of Plaquenil® were within the acceptable limit of 0.80-1.20 and 0.80-1.25, respectively. Therefore, the generic HCQ was bioequivalent to the innovator formulation.

In vitro Dissolution Profile at Different Biological pH Conditions of Hydroxychloroquine Sulfate Tablets Is Available for the Treatment of COVID-19

Hydroxychloroquine sulfate is one of an extensive series of 4-aminoquinolines with antimalarial activity. Moreover, it is used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Sometimes, hydroxychloroquine sulfate is beneficial for the treatment of autoimmune diseases. Based on recent clinical experiments, it is exploited for the treatment of COVID-19, coronavirus across the globe. The chromatogram separation was achieved by using Agilent, Zorbax C8, 250 mm × 4.6 mm i.d., column. The buffer consists of 0.01 M of 1-pentane sulfonic acid and 0.02% of orthophosphoric acid in purified water. Mixed buffer, acetonitrile, and methanol (800:100:100 v/v). The flow rate was 1.0 ml min-1, and injection volume was 10 μl. Detection was made at 254 nm by using a dual absorbance detector (DAD). The reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) method has been developed and validated as per the current International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) guidelines to estimate hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets. As part of method validation, specificity, linearity, precision, and recovery parameters were verified. The concentration and area relationships were linear (R 2 > 0.999) over the concentration range of 25-300 μg ml-1 for hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). The relative standard deviations for precision and intermediate precision were <1.5%. The proposed RP-HPLC generic method was applied successfully to evaluate the in vitro dissolution profile with different pH conditions such as 0.1 N HCl, pH 4.5 acetate buffer, and pH 6.8 phosphate buffers as US-marketed reference products.

Stability Indicating LC Method Development for Hydroxychloroquine Sulfate Impurities as Available for Treatment of COVID-19 and Evaluation of Risk Assessment Prior to Method Validation by Quality by Design Approach

A quality by design-based stability indicating HPLC method has been developed for hydroxychloroquine sulfate impurities. The optimized HPLC method can detect and quantify the hydroxychloroquine sulfate and related organic impurities in pharmaceutical solid oral dosage forms. Nowadays, for the quantification of impurities in drug products demands more comprehensive way of analytical method development. The quality by design approach allows the assessment of different analytical parameters and their effects with minimum number of experiments. A highly sensitive and stability indicating RP-HPLC method was developed and evaluated the risk assessment prior to method validation. The chromatographic separation was achieved with X-terra phenyl column (250 × 4.6 mm, 5 µm) using phosphate buffer (0.3 M and pH 2.5). The gradient method flow rate was 1.5 mL min-1 and UV detection was made at 220 nm. The calibration curve of hydroxychloroquine sulfate and related impurities were linear from LOQ to 150% and correlation coefficient was found more than 0.999. The precision and intermediate precision % RSD values were found less than 2.0. In all forced degradation conditions, the purity angle of HCQ was found less than purity threshold. The optimized method found to be specific, accurate, rugged, and robust for determination of hydroxychloroquine sulfate impurities in the solid oral dosage forms. Finally, the method was applied successfully in quality control lab for stability analysis.

Analytical Methods on Determination in Pharmaceuticals and Biological Materials of Chloroquine as Available for the Treatment of COVID-19

With the outbreak caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (COVID-19), people's health and existing economies on a global scale are seriously threatened. Currently, most of the countries all over the world are studying extensively to better understand the antimalarial chloroquine (CQ) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for therapeutic purposes due to the COVID-19 outbreak. However, CQ and HCQ can have serious side effects, from psychiatric effects to sudden death. Therefore, a faster and more effective detection method is needed to monitor drug concentrations. In this review, a large study was conducted on the detection techniques and quantitative determination methods of CQ and its related metabolites. In this review, chromatography, electrophoresis, electroanalytical, spectroscopic, and immunological methods for CQ and related metabolites are discussed extensively. It is hoped that a better understanding of the CQ used for therapeutic purposes in the COVID-19 outbreak will be provided.

A Novel RP-HPLC-DAD Method Development for Anti-Malarial and COVID-19 Hydroxy Chloroquine Sulfate Tablets and Profiling of In-Vitro Dissolution in Multimedia

Hydroxychloroquine sulfate is one of a large series of 4-aminoquinolines with antimalarial activity. Moreover, it is used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Sometimes Hydroxychloroquine sulfate is very effective for the treatment of autoimmune diseases. Based on the recent clinical experiments it is exploiting for the treatment of COVID-19, corona virus across the globe. A Reverse phase RP-HPLC method have been developed and validated as per the current ICH guidelines for estimation of Hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets. As part of method validation specificity, linearity, precision and recovery parameters were verified. The concentration and area relationships were linear (R2 > 0.999), over the concentration range of 25 to 300 μg mL-1 for HCQ. The relative standard deviations for precision and intermediate precision were less than 1.5%. The proposed RP-HPLC generic method was applied successfully for evaluation of invitro dissolution profile with different pH conditions like 0.1N HCl, pH 4.5 Acetate buffer and pH 6.8 Phosphate buffers of US marketed reference product.

Drug-induced immune thrombocytopenia: Mapping of the drug binding site to the membrane-proximal region of platelet GPIX

Drug-induced Immune thrombocytopenia (DIT) is a common complication of several medications, including commonly used antibiotics. The most widely studied DIT is caused by quinine. In DIT, antibodies predominantly bind to the platelet membrane glycoprotein (GP) IX in a drug-dependent fashion resulting in increased platelet clearance. Binding of the sensitizing drug, such as quinine, to GPIX has been proposed but is yet to be established. This work demonstrates that quinine is retained specifically by human GPIX. Quinine binding was first analyzed in wild-type mouse platelets and in transgenic mouse platelet expressing human GPIX using high performance liquid chromatography. Binding of quinine to GPIX was then measured in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells expressing a combination of wild type, human or mouse, three human/mouse chimeric constructs and six mutant GPIX proteins. Quinine was retained by human GPIX. No detectable absorption was observed with mouse GPIX or human GPIbα. The quinine binding site was mapped to residues 110-115 of human GPIX suggesting that quinine interacts with specific residues of the GP. These findings provide further insights into the molecular mechanisms of DIT.

Development and Validation of Reversed-Phase High Performance Liquid Chromatographic Method for Hydroxychloroquine Sulphate

In the present work new, simple reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatographic method was developed and validated for the determination of hydroxychloroquine sulphate in blood plasma. Chloroquine sulphate was used as an internal standard. The chromatographic separation was achieved with octadecyl silane Hypersil C18 column (250×6 mm, 5 μm) using water and organic (acetonitrile:methanol: 50:50, v/v) mobile phase in 75:25 v/v ratio, with sodium 1-pentanesulfonate and phosphoric acid. This organic phase was maintained at pH 3.0 by orthophosphoric acid. The flow rate of 2.0 ml/min(.) with detection at 343 nm was used in the analysis. The calibration curve of standard hydroxychloroquine sulphate was linear in range 0.1-20.0 μg/ml. The method was validated with respected to linearity, range, precision, accuracy, specificity and robustness studies according to ICH guidelines. The method was found to be accurate and robust to analyze the hydroxychloroquine sulphate in plasma samples.

Analysis of alkaloids from different chemical groups by different liquid chromatography methods

Alkaloids are biologically active compounds widely used as pharmaceuticals and synthesised as secondary methabolites in plants. Many of these compounds are strongly toxic. Therefore, they are often subject of scientific interests and analysis. Since alkaloids — basic compounds appear in aqueous solutions as ionized and unionized forms, they are difficult for chromatographic separation for peak tailing, poor systems efficiency, poor separation and poor column-to-column reproducibility. For this reason it is necessity searching of more suitable chromatographic systems for analysis of the compounds. In this article we present an overview on the separation of selected alkaloids from different chemical groups by liquid chromatography thus indicating the range of useful methods now available for alkaloid analysis. Different selectivity, system efficiency and peaks shape may be achieved in different LC methods separations by use of alternative stationary phases: silica, alumina, chemically bonded stationary phases, cation exchange phases, or by varying nonaqueous or aqueous mobile phase (containing different modifier, different buffers at different pH, ion-pairing or silanol blocker reagents). Developments in TLC (NP and RP systems), HPLC (NP, RP, HILIC, ion-exchange) are presented and the advantages of each method for alkaloids analysis are discussed.

Comparison of column-coupled electrophoresis with liquid chromatography methods in food analysis of quinine

Comparison of column-coupled electrophoresis with liquid chromatography methods in food analysis of quinine (QUI) is presented in this work. The capillary isotachophoresis (CITP) on-line coupled with capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) and hyphenated with fibre-based spectrophotometric diode array detection (DAD) was compared with, (i) high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method with DAD detection, and (ii) HPLC method with fluorescence detection (FD). These methods were compared through their performance parameters and determined concentrations of QUI in beverages. The concentrations of QUI in two selected bitter drinks determined by the CITP-CZE-DAD method were in a good accordance with the HPLC-DAD and HPLC-FD methods. In addition, the electrophoretic method, as well as the chromatographic methods, was able to separate potential QUI related impurities from the QUI peak. The CITP-CZE-DAD method provided excellent performance parameters that were comparable (precision, accuracy, LOD, robustness) or even better (separation efficiency) than those ones provided by the chromatographic methods. Moreover, the effectivity of the electrophoresis method was higher when considering cost of analysis (equipment, consumption of separation systems), environmental aspects (organicvs. aqueous solvents), on-line sample pretreatment (CITP preconcentration and sample clean-up suitable also for the more complex matrices). Considering these findings, CITP-CZE-DAD was approved as a routine automatized method for the highly reliable quality food control.