Novel electrophoretic acetonitrile-based stacking for sensitive monitoring of the antiepileptic drug perampanel in human serum

FRET-Based Dual-Color Carbon Dot Ratiometric Fluorescent Sensor Enables the Smartphone-Integrated Device for Noninvasive and Portable Diagnosis of Chronic Kidney Disease

Cystatin C (Cys C), a crucial renal disease marker for chronic kidney disease (CKD), plays a vital role in early diagnosis and treatment guidance. However, most current methods for detecting Cys C rely on a single signal and find it difficult to perform noninvasive and portable diagnosis. Here, we developed a ratiometric fluorescent carbon dot (CD) detection system for point-of-care testing (POCT) of Cys C through fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). The detection is based on the hydrolysis effect of papain on a bovine serum albumin (BSA) scaffold and the specific inhibitory effect of Cys C on papain, endowing high-resolution color variance. Moreover, a low-cost, portable, yet reliable smartphone-assisted miniaturized device for real-time quantitative POCT of Cys C has been developed with a limit of detection (LOD) as low as 0.4 μg/mL. This sensing platform can effectively differentiate patients from healthy volunteers, which facilitates self-screening for healthy individuals and home monitoring for CKD patients.

Microdialysis as a tool for antibiotic assessment in patients with diabetic foot: a review

Diabetic foot is a serious late complication frequently caused by infection and ischaemia. Both require prompt and aggressive treatment to avoid lower limb amputation. The effectiveness of peripheral arterial disease therapy can be easily verified using triplex ultrasound, ankle-brachial/toe-brachial index examination, or transcutaneous oxygen pressure. However, the success of infection treatment is difficult to establish in patients with diabetic foot. Intravenous systemic antibiotics are recommended for the treatment of infectious complications in patients with moderate or serious stages of infection. Antibiotic therapy should be initiated promptly and aggressively to achieve sufficient serum and peripheral antibiotic concentrations. Antibiotic serum levels are easily evaluated by pharmacokinetic assessment. However, antibiotic concentrations in peripheral tissues, especially in diabetic foot, are not routinely detectable. This review describes microdialysis techniques that have shown promise in determining antibiotic levels in the surroundings of diabetic foot lesions.

Monitoring of circulating amino acids in patients with pancreatic cancer and cancer cachexia using capillary electrophoresis and contactless conductivity detection

Branched chain amino acids (BCAAs), alanine and glutamine are determined in human plasma by capillary electrophoresis with contactless conductivity detection (CE/C⁴ D). The baseline separation of five amino acids from other plasma components is achieved on the short capillary effective length of 18 cm in 3.2 mol/L acetic acid with addition of 13% v/v methanol as background electrolyte. Migration times range from 2.01 min for valine to 2.84 min for glutamine, and LODs for untreated plasma are in the interval 0.7-0.9 μmol/L. Sample treatment is based on the addition of acetonitrile to only 15 μL of plasma and supernatant is directly subjected to CE/C⁴ D. Circulating amino acids are measured in patients with pancreatic cancer and cancer cachexia during oral glucose tolerance test. It is shown that patients with pancreatic cancer and cancer cachexia syndrome exhibit low basal circulating BCAAs and glutamine levels and loss of their insulin-dependent suppression.

New Methods Used in Pharmacokinetics and Therapeutic Monitoring of the First and Newer Generations of Antiepileptic Drugs (AEDs)

The review presents data from the last few years on bioanalytical methods used in therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of the 1st-3rd generation and the newest antiepileptic drug (AEDs) cenobamate in patients with various forms of seizures. Chemical classification, structure, mechanism of action, pharmacokinetic data and therapeutic ranges for total and free fractions and interactions were collected. The primary data on bioanalytical methods for AEDs determination included biological matrices, sample preparation, dried blood spot (DBS) analysis, column resolution, detection method, validation parameters, and clinical utility. In conclusion, the most frequently described method used in AED analysis is the LC-based technique (HPLC, UHPLC, USLC) combined with highly sensitive mass detection or fluorescence detection. However, less sensitive UV is also used. Capillary electrophoresis and gas chromatography have been rarely applied. Besides the precipitation of proteins or LLE, an automatic SPE is often a sample preparation method. Derivatization was also indicated to improve sensitivity and automate the analysis. The usefulness of the methods for TDM was also highlighted.

Separation of anaesthetic ketamine and its derivates in PAMAPTAC coated capillaries with tuneable counter-current electroosmotic flow

Capillary electrophoretic separation of ketamine, norketamine, hydroxynorketamine, and dehydronorketamine was performed in the counter-current regime under the influence of oppositely-directed electroosmotic flow. For this purpose, the fused silica capillaries were covalently coated with the poly(acrylamide-co-3-acrylamidopropyl trimethylammonium chloride) copolymer (PAMAPTAC). The content of the cationic monomer APTAC in the polymerization mixture varied in the range 0-6 mol. % and the generated electroosmotic flow increased continuously in the 0-20 · 10^-9 m²V^-1s^-1 interval. Importantly, it resulted in improved electrophoretic resolution of ketamine/norketamine, which increased from 0.8 for neutral PAM coating (i.e. 0% PAMAPTAC) to 3.0 for 6% PAMAPTAC. The determination of ketamine and its derivates in rat serum was performed in a 4% PAMAPTAC capillary with an inner diameter of 25 μm. The separation was performed in a 500 mM aqueous solution of acetic acid (pH 2.3). The clinical sample was deproteinized by the addition of acetonitrile to the serum and a large volume of the treated sample was injected directly into the capillary. The achieved limit of detection ranged from 2.2 ng/mL for dehydronorketamine to 4.1 ng/mL for hydroxynorketamine; the intra-day repeatability was 1.0-1.5% for the migration time and 2.8-3.3% for the peak area. The developed methodology was employed for time monitoring of ketamines in rat serum after intra venous administration of low doses of anaesthetic at a level of 2 μg per g of body weight.

Rapid electrophoretic monitoring of the anaesthetic ketamine and its metabolite norketamine in rat blood using a contactless conductivity detector to study the pharmacokinetics

A method of capillary electrophoresis with contactless conductivity detection has been developed for non-enantioselective monitoring the anaesthetic ketamine and its main metabolite norketamine. The separation is performed in a 15 μm capillary with an overall length of 31.5 cm and length to detector of 18 cm; inner surface of the capillary is covered with a commercial coating solution to reduce the electroosmotic flow. In an optimised background electrolyte with composition 2 M acetic acid + 1% v/v coating solution under application of a high voltage of 30 kV, the migration time is 97.1 s for ketamine and 95.8 s for norketamine, with an electrophoretic resolution of 1.2. The attained detection limit was 83 ng/mL (0.3 μmol/L) for ketamine and 75 ng/mL (0.3 μmol/L) for norketamine; the number of theoretic plates for separation of an equimolar model mixture with a concentration of 2 μg/mL was 683 500 plates/m for ketamine and 695 400 plates/m for norketamine. Laboratory preparation of rat blood plasma is based on mixing 10 μL of plasma with 30 μL of acidified acetonitrile, followed by centrifugation. A pharmacokinetic study demonstrated an exponential decrease in the plasma concentration of ketamine after intravenous application and much slower kinetics for intraperitoneal application.

A separation voltage polarity switching method for higher sample loading capacity and better separation resolution in transient capillary isotachophoresis separation

A separation voltage polarity switching transient capillary isotachophoresis (PS-tCITP) was developed to overcome a major sample loading volume limitation in transient capillary isotachophoresis (tCITP). The fundamental idea of PS-tCITP is to let sample ions move back and forth in a separation capillary during their initial isotachophoresis focusing stage by switching the polarity of the separation voltage, in order to both increase the sample loading volume and improve the separation efficiency as compared to the conventional tCITP method. The experimental evaluation of the novel PS-tCITP method by using two peptide standards at 2 μM concentration showed that the maximum sample loading volume could be increased from 45% of the total separation capillary volume in tCITP to 70% in PS-tCITP, which resulted in a more than 1.5 fold increase in the peptide peak intensity at a given length/volume of the separation capillary. Due to the consecutive focusing of sample volume from each polarity switching of the separation voltage, the separation time window at a given sample loading volume was also increased significantly in PS-tCITP as compared to tCITP. Experiment comparison between tCITP and PS-tCITP at 45% sample loading volume using the same setup showed that the migration time difference between the two peptide peaks increased from 0.3 min in tCITP to 0.363 min in PS-tCITP with similar peak widths and heights, resulting in roughly a 21% improvement in separation resolution. The performance advantages of PS-tCITP separation over tCITP separation were further verified by using a mixture of six peptide standards.