Two chromatographic methods for the determination of some antimigraine drugs

QuEChERS-assisted ion pair chromatography/fluorescence detection method for determination of antimigraine combination therapy in rabbit plasma samples: Application to a pharmacokinetic study

Antimigraine combination therapy has shown significant effectiveness in relieving pain, as well as reducing the frequency, duration, and severity of migraine attacks if compared to a single migraine medication. This work represents the first analytical investigation for emphasizing the synergistic effect of combining ophthalmic beta blockers with triptans in migraine treatment. The presented study was conducted to investigate the pharmacokinetic profile of almotriptan (ALM), a serotonin (5-HT1B/1D) receptor agonist used to treat migraine, when coadministered with timolol (TIM) or verapamil (VER) which are considered as an adjuvant therapy in migraine prevention. Ion pair chromatography (IPC) with online fluorescence detection was applied to simultaneously detect and quantify the binary mixtures of ALM/TIM and ALM/VER in rabbit plasma samples. The separation was achieved using a Platinum C18 analytical column with a mobile phase composed of methanol: 35 mmol L-1 phosphate buffer solution containing 10 mmol L-1 SDS at pH = 6.8 (60:40 v/v). Several parameters were evaluated during the optimization of separation conditions including mobile phase composition, buffer concentration, buffer pH and concentration of ion pair reagent. A thorough investigation of the retention mechanism was performed, and the results showed that Coulomb forces were the main contributors to the overall retention mechanism, which may be hydrophobically assisted. QuEChERS extraction technique was utilized to extract the investigated drugs from plasma samples and a detailed study was carried out to optimize partition/extraction solvents, pH, extraction salts, sample volume and clean-up step. The method had a limit of detection and quantitation of 5.6 and 16.9 ng mL-1 for ALM in ALM/TIM mixture and 2.5 and 7.6 ng mL-1 for ALM in ALM/VER mixture, with an overall recovery not less than 95.22%. This newly proposed method offers a faster alternative to existing chromatographic methods for extraction and determination of ALM in binary mixtures with TIM or VER in rabbit plasma and provides a platform for studying pharmacokinetic parameters. The coadministration of either TIM or VER with ALM resulted in a notable rise in Cmax (maximum plasma concentration) and AUC (area under the plasma concentration-time curve) of ALM, implying possible alterations in the absorption and overall exposure of ALM.

A New extractive spectrophotometric method for determination of rizatriptan dosage forms using bromocresol green

Background and the purpose of the study

Rizatriptan is used effectively for the treatment of migraine headache. In this study, a simple, rapid and low cost spectrophotometric method based on the ion-pair complexation is proposed for the determination of rizatriptan in raw material and dosage forms.

Methods

The ion-pair complexation using bromocresol green as reagent was performed in a buffer solution and the absorbance was measured by a spectrophotometer. The ion-pair formation conditions were optimized and the accuracy and precision of the method were calculated.

Results and major conclusion

Best results were achieved by using 6 ml of the bromocresol green reagent in the presence of phosphate buffer (pH 3.0). The stoichiometry of the resulted complex was 1:1. The within-day and between-day precision values were lower than 2.9 and 1.8 percent for the calibration range of 0.5–50 and 10–100 μg/ml, respectively. The proposed method was successfully used for the determination of rizatriptan in dosage forms without any interference.