Use of a three-factor interpretive optimisation strategy in the development of an isocratic chromatographic procedure for the screening of diuretics in urine samples using micellar mobile phases

Multi-scale optimisation vs. genetic algorithms in the gradient separation of diuretics by reversed-phase liquid chromatography

Multi-linear gradients are a convenient solution to get separation of complex samples by modulating carefully the gradient slope, in order to accomplish the local selectivity needs for each particular solute cluster. These gradients can be designed by trial-and-error according to the chromatographer experience, but this strategy becomes quickly inappropriate for complex separations. More evolved solutions imply the sequential construction of multi-segmented gradients. However, this strategy discards part of the search space in each step of the construction and, again, cannot deal properly with very complex samples. When the complexity is too large, the only valid alternative for finding the best gradient is the use of global search methods, such as genetic algorithms (GAs). Recently, a new global approach where the level of detail is increased along the search has been proposed, namely Multi-scale optimisation (MSO). In this strategy, cubic splines are applied to build intermediate curves to define any arbitrary solvent variation function. Subdivision schemes are used to generate the cubic splines and control their level of detail. The search was subjected to a number of restrictions, such as avoiding long elution and favouring a balanced peak distribution. The aim of this work is evaluating and comparing the results of GAs and MSO. Both approaches were tested with a set of 14 diuretics and probenecid, eluted with acetonitrile-water mixtures using a C18 column. Satisfactory baseline resolution was obtained with an analysis time of 15-16 min. We found that GAs optimisation offered results equivalent to those provided by MSO, when the penalisation parameters were included in the cost function.

Modulation of retention and selectivity in oil-in-water microemulsion liquid chromatography: A review

Microemulsions (MEs) are stable, isotropically clear solutions consisting of an oil and water stabilized by a surfactant and a co-surfactant. Oil-in-water microemuslion liquid chromatography (MELC) is a relatively new chromatographic mode, which uses an O/W ME as mobile phase. Retention, selectivity and efficiency can be modified by changing the concentration of the ME components and the ratio between the aqueous and oil phases. This work makes a critical survey on the information found in the literature about the mobile phase compositions that lead to the creation of successful O/W ME mobile phases, as well as the effect of pH for ionizable compounds and temperature. The viability of performing the analyses using isocratic and gradient elution is also considered. The complexity of the composition of a successful ME, and the fact that the different factors interact each other, may require many manipulations during method development to achieve an acceptable separation for complex mixtures. This is the reason of the proposal from several authors of a standard ME as starting point when developing a method for a new separation with no previous reports. Based on these initial conditions, the interest of several authors in applying computer-assisted approaches to optimize the composition of ME mobile phases, and reduce significantly the time and reagent consumption for method development, is described. Some practical tips are given to prepare stable ME mobile phases that yield reproducible results.

Micellar liquid chromatography in doping control

The issue of doping control in sport involves the development of reliable analytical procedures and efficient strategies to process a large number of samples in a short period of time. Reversed-phase LC techniques with aqueous-organic mobile phases and MS or diode-array detection yield satisfactory results for the identification of prohibited substances in sport. However, time-consuming sample pretreatment steps are required, which reduces sample throughput. Micellar LC (MLC) that uses hybrid mobile phases of surfactant above its critical micellar concentration and organic solvent has been revealed as an interesting alternative. The surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate solubilizes the protein components of urine, serum and plasma, which permits their direct injection into the chromatographic system. Only dilution and filtering of the samples may be required. Most MLC analyses are performed in isocratic mode, with short retention times and good selectivity. The sensitivity of MLC allows the detection of a variety of doping substances at least 24-48 h after being administered.

Separation optimization of quercetin, hesperetin and chrysin in honey by micellar liquid chromatography and experimental design

The chemometrics approach was applied for the separation optimization of flavonoid markers (quercetin, hesperetin and chrysin) in honey using micellar liquid chromatography (MLC). The investigated method combines SPE of flavonoids from honey using C(18) cartridge and their separation and quantification by micellar liquid chromatography. A two level full factorial design was carried out to evaluate the effect of four experimental factors including concentration of SDS, alkyl chain length of the alcohol used as the organic modifier (N), volume percentage of the organic modifier (V(m)) and volume percentage of acetic acid (AcOH) in mobile phase on analytes retention times. Experiments for analytes retention times modeling and optimization of separation were performed according to central composite design. Multiple linear regression method was used for the construction of the best model based on experimental retention times. Pareto optimal method was used to find suitable compatibility between resolution and analysis time of analytes in honey. The optimum mobile phase composition for separation and determination of analytes in honey were [SDS]=0.124  mol/L; 7.8% v/v ethanol and 5.0% v/v AcOH. Limits of detection and linear range of flavonoid markers were 0.0079-0.0126, 0.05-50.0  mg/L, respectively.

Interaction and micellar solubilization of diclofenac with cetyltrimethylammonium bromide: A spectrophotometric study

In this study, the interaction of diclofenac (Dic) with cationic surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) was investigated. The effect of cationic micelles on solubilization of diclofenac in aqueous micellar solution was studied at pH 6.8, 29 °C and various drug concentrations. The binding of diclofenac to CTAB micelles was accompanied by a batochromic shift in the drug absorption spectra. The solubility of diclofenac increased with increasing surfactant concentration as a consequence of the association between the drug and micelles. From the results, the binding constants Kb, was obtained. By using the pseudo-phase model, the partition coefficient between the bulk water and CTAB micelles, Kx, and the Gibbs energy of binding were calculated. The value of binding constant and partition coefficient are increased by increasing of diclofenac concentration.

Retention mechanisms in micellar liquid chromatography

Micellar liquid chromatography (MLC) is a reversed-phase liquid chromatographic (RPLC) mode with mobile phases containing a surfactant (ionic or non-ionic) above its critical micellar concentration (CMC). In these conditions, the stationary phase is modified with an approximately constant amount of surfactant monomers, and the solubilising capability of the mobile phase is altered by the presence of micelles, giving rise to diverse interactions (hydrophobic, ionic and steric) with major implications in retention and selectivity. From its beginnings in 1980, the technique has evolved up to becoming a real alternative in some instances (and a complement in others) to classical RPLC with hydro-organic mixtures, owing to its peculiar features and unique advantages. This review is aimed to describe the retention mechanisms (i.e. solute interactions with both stationary and mobile phases) in an MLC system, revealed in diverse reports where the retention behaviour of solutes of different nature (ionic or neutral exhibiting a wide range of polarities) has been studied in a variety of conditions (with ionic and non-ionic surfactants, added salt and organic solvent, and varying pH). The theory is supported by several mechanistic models that describe satisfactorily the retention behaviour, and allow the measurement of the strength of solute-stationary phase and solute-micelle interactions. Suppression of silanol activity, steric effects in the packing pores, anti-binding behaviour, retention of ionisable compounds, compensating effect on polarity differences among solutes, and the contribution of the solvation parameter model to elucidate the interactions in MLC, are commented.

Determination of trazodone in urine and pharmaceuticals using micellar liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection

A simple and reliable liquid chromatographic procedure is described for the determination of trazodone in pharmaceutical formulations and urine samples. The optimized procedure uses fluorimetric detection, a C18 column and a micellar mobile phase of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and 1-butanol. The mobile phase selected for use was 0.2M SDS and 8% 1-butanol fixed at pH 3 with phosphate buffer. The total analysis time was 10 min. For the analysis of urine samples, one great advantage of the method is that no extraction step is required. The quantification limit was 9.5 ng mL(-1), ensuring the analysis of the drug in biological fluids. The procedure shows good accuracy, repeatability and selectivity. Repeatability and intermediate precision were tested for several concentrations of the drug. Good claim percentages were obtained in the analysis of pharmaceutical formulations. Calibration repeatability in urine matrix was also studied in the 0.06-22.4 microg mL(-1) range. Good recoveries were obtained from spiked urine samples. No interferences from common additives frequently administered with trazodone or from endogenous compounds in urine samples were found. The results show that the procedure is suitable for routine analysis of the drug.

Models and objective functions for the optimisation of selectivity in reversed-phase liquid chromatography

Interpretive methodologies are the most efficient tools for finding the optimal conditions in chromatography. These methodologies are supported by models or algorithms able to infer the system behaviour upon changes in the experimental factors. Once the models are built with data obtained from sets of carefully designed experiments, molecular modelling or other approaches, they can be applied to predict the performance of new conditions. The different elements involved in these methodologies, for both isocratic and gradient elution, are given. Special attention is devoted to the description of retention, owing to its major impact on the prediction of chromatographic resolution. Several models considering the main factors affecting retention (i.e. organic modifiers, pH and temperature), and procedures that enhance the predictions, are presented. Both the existence of skewed peaks and the effect of elution conditions on peak profiles are considered. Finally, the assessment of resolution, as well as other secondary aims that affect the practical suitability of the optimal conditions, is discussed.

Amitriptyline and nortriptyline serum determination by micellar liquid chromatography

INTRODUCTION

Amitriptyline and nortriptyline are tricyclic antidepressants which act by enhancing the actions of norepinephrine and serotonin caused by blocking the re-uptake of various neurotransmitters at the neuronal membrane. A micellar liquid chromatographic procedure was developed to determine these drugs in serum samples for use in clinical monitoring.

METHODS

The chromatographic determination of these highly hydrophobic substances was carried out using a 0.15 M SDS-6% (v/v) pentanol buffered at pH 7, in a C18 column, and electrochemical detection at 650 mV. The flow-rate was 1.5 mL/min. The analysis time was 14 min.

RESULTS

The limits of detection (ng/mL) in serum were 0.25 and 0.31 for amitriptyline and nortriptyline, respectively. Repeatability and intermediate precision were evaluated at three different concentrations in serum samples.

DISCUSSION

Untreated serum samples were injected directly into the HPLC system after filtration, leading to be a simple procedure that can be applied in routine analyses for Therapeutic Drug Monitoring.

Multicommuted flow-through fluorescence optosensor for determination of furosemide and triamterene

Multicommutation implemented with flow-through optosensors is a very promising area of research. This recent approach benefits from the advantages of both methods and results in high sensitivity, selectivity, and speed, and little waste generation. This paper reports the simultaneous determination of furosemide and triamterene, two widely used diuretics, by measurement of their native fluorescence. The system has been proved to be useful for determination of both analytes in pharmaceutical preparations and for determination of triamterene in human urine and serum. A minicolumn filled with Sephadex SPC-25 microbeads was used to achieve separation of both analytes before detection in a flow-through cell filled with the same resin. The sensor is linear in the range 50-1200 and 0.4-8 ng mL(-1) with detection limits of 15 and 0.1 ng mL(-1) for furosemide and triamterene, respectively.

Sequential injection extraction based on restricted access material for determination of furosemide in serum

Restricted access material (RAM) column containing 25 microm C18 alkyl-diol support was integrated into the sequential injection analysis (SIA) manifold and the SIA-RAM system was tested for direct determination of furosemide in serum. LiChrospher ADS column based on restricted access material is proposed to direct injection of biofluids. The integration of RAM material into SIA enabled creation of a comprehensive on-line sample clean-up technique combined with fluorescence quantitation of analyte. Centrifuged and diluted serum sample was aspirated into the system and loaded onto the column using acetonitrile-water (2:98), pH 2.7. The analyte was retained on the column while proteins contained in the sample were removed to the waste without precipitation and clogging the column. Interfering substances complicating the detection were washed out by acetonitrile-water (15:85), pH 2.7 in the next step. The extracted analyte was eluted by means of acetonitrile-water (25:75), pH 2.3 to the fluorescence detector (emission filter 385 nm). The whole procedure comprising sample pre-treatment, analyte detection and column reconditioning took 20 min. The recoveries of furosemide from serum lay between 101.4 and 103.4% for three concentrations of analyte.

Effects of pH and the presence of micelles on the resolution of diuretics by reversed-phase liquid chromatography

A comparative study on the performance of two RPLC modes on the separation of 18 diuretics with diverse acid-base behaviour (acetazolamide, althiazide, amiloride, bendroflumethiazide, benzthiazide, bumetanide, canrenoic acid, chlorothiazide, chlorthalidone, ethacrynic acid, furosemide, hydrochlorothiazide, piretanide, probenecid, spironolactone, triamterene, trichloromethiazide and xipamide) was carried out. A conventional octadecylsilane column and acidic acetonitrile-water mobile phases, in the absence and presence of micelles of the anionic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS), were used. The effects of pH and the modifiers acetonitrile and SDS on peak asymmetry, efficiency, selectivity, resolution and analysis time, were examined. The comparison of both RPLC modes (aqueous- and micellar-organics) was done using the same processing tools, applying several polynomial and mechanistic equations to describe the retention. The best separations were obtained by maximising the product of peak purities, considering a wide range of experimental conditions. The study illustrates that, despite the theoretical and practical complexity of the problem, the predicted optimal chromatograms can be reproduced experimentally with great accuracy. None of the examined RPLC modes was able to yield baseline separation of the 18 diuretics. However, their selectivity was complementary, being appropriate for different combinations of a smaller number of the assayed diuretics.

Prediction of internal standards in reversed-phase liquid chromatography. III. Evaluation of an alternative solvation parameter model to correlate and predict the retention of ionizable compounds

This paper describes the results of the evaluation of an alternative solvation parameter model for ionizable compounds. The new model is described as Log(k) = Int + rR2 + spi2(H) + asigmaalpha2(H) + bsigmabeta2(H) + mVx + U/(1 + V10 (+/-(pH-Pk))). The first six terms are the usual solvation parameter equation for neutral solutes, and the last term represents the contribution to retention from the ionization of solutes. Retention data obtained for 30 solutes in acetonitrile/aqueous buffer mobile phases are used to evaluate the capability of the function using different pH/pK scales. Because the function is not linear, nonlinear least-squares analysis is used to perform the data processing. It is concluded that the model function describes similarly the retention of ionizable compounds to the literature model without the need to accurately measure the mobile phase pH and solute's pK. Accordingly, the function simplifies the application of linear solvation energy relationships (LSERs) to ionizable compounds, and allows us to easily predict their retention for chromatographic optimization.

Simultaneous determination of amiloride and furosemide in pharmaceutical formulations by first digital derivative spectrophotometry

This work presents a simple and fast method for the simultaneous determination of amiloride and furosemide by digital derivative spectrophotometry. HCl 1 x 10(-2) mol/l dissolved in ethanol was used as solvent and to extract drugs from formulations. Subsequently the samples were evaluated directly by first digital derivative spectrophotometry, using a smoothing factor of 8 and scale factor of 1 x 10(-4). The simultaneous determination of furosemide and amiloride can be carried out at 241.4 and 343.6 nm, respectively. In both cases, the zero crossing approach was used. When both compounds are present together in a sample, it is possible to quantify one in the presence of the other, without mutual interference. The determination range was found to be of 6.9 x 10(-8) to 16 x 10(-5) and 6.8 x 10(-8) to 8 x 10(-5) mol/l, for amiloride and furosemide, respectively. A good level of repeatability (RSD) of 0.9 and 0.6% was observed for amiloride and furosemide, respectively. The ingredients commonly found in commercial pharmaceutical formulations do not interfere. The proposed method was applied to the determination of these drugs in pharmaceutical formulations.

Micellar liquid chromatography: suitable technique for screening analysis

The screening capability of micellar liquid chromatography (MLC) is discussed using the reported chromatographic data of several sets of compounds (amino acids, beta-blockers, diuretics, phenethylamines, phenols, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, steroids and sulfonamides) and new results (sulfonamides and steroids). The chromatographic data are treated with an interpretive optimisation resolution procedure to obtain the best separation conditions. Usually, the pH and the concentration of surfactant (sodium dodecyl sulfate, SDS, or cetyltrimethylammonium bromide) for the optimal mobile phase were 2.5-3 and < 0.12 M, respectively. The nature and concentration of organic solvent depended on the polarity of the eluted compounds: a low volume fraction of propanol (approximately 1%, v/v) was useful to separate the amino acids, with log P(o/w) < -1 (where P(o/w) is the octanol-water partition coefficient). A greater concentration of this solvent (approximately 5-7%) was needed for compounds in the range -1 < log P(o/w) < 2, as with the studied diuretics and sulfonamides, and a high concentration of propanol (approximately 15%) or a low concentration of butanol (< 10%) had to be used for less polar compounds with 1 < log P(o/w) < 3, such as the beta-blockers. Pentanol (< 6%) was more suitable for the even less polar compounds with log P(o/w) > 3, such as the steroids. For basic drugs such as the phenethylamines (0 < log P(o/w) < 1.7), eluted with a micellar eluent of anionic SDS, propanol was too weak. A study is also shown for mixtures of sulfonamides (log P(o/w) = -1.2 to 1.7) and steroids (log P(o/w) = 3.0-8.1) eluted from conventional C18 columns with SDS mobile phases containing acetonitrile and 1-pentanol, respectively, which are compared with classical acetonitrile-water and methanol-water mixtures. The results complement a previous study on beta-blockers (log P(o/w) = -0.03 to 2.8) and reveal that MLC is a very competitive technique for the screening of compounds against conventional RPLC, due to its peculiar behaviour with regard to the selectivity and elution strength. The concentration of organic solvent needed to obtain sufficiently low retention times (even for highly hydrophobic steroids with log P(o/w) = 7-8) is also appreciably smaller for MLC, which reduces the environmental impact of the mobile phases.

Control of propranolol intake by direct chromatographic detection of alpha-naphthoxylactic acid in urine

A rapid chromatographic procedure with a C18 column, a mobile phase of 0.15 M sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)-10% (v/v) 1-propanol at pH 3 (0.01 M phosphate buffer), and fluorimetric detection, is reported for the control of propranolol (PPL) intake in urine samples, which are injected directly without any other treatment than filtration. The peak of PPL was only observed in samples taken a few hours after ingestion of the drug due to its extensive conjugation and metabolisation. The detection of several unconjugated PPL metabolites was therefore considered: desisopropylpropranolol (DIP), propranolol glycol (PPG), alpha-naphthoxylactic acid (NLT) and alpha-naphthoxyacetic acid (NAC). NLT showed the best characteristics: it eluted at a much shorter retention time than PPL, its concentration in urine samples was greater and it did not present any interference from endogeneous compounds in urine, common drugs or drugs administered in combination with PPL. The limit of quantification, measured as the concentration of analyte providing a relative standard deviation of 20%, was 24 ng/ml, and the day-to-day imprecision was below 4% for concentrations above 200 ng/ml. The procedure allows the routine control of PPL at therapeutic urine levels. Urinary excretion studies showed that the detection of NLT is possible at least up to 20-30 h after oral administration.