Determination of nikethamide by micellar electrokinetic chromatography

A simple, fast, sensitive and reproducible micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC)–UV method for the determination of nikethamide (NKD) in human urine and pharmaceutical formulation has been developed and validated. The method exhibits high trueness, good precision, short analysis time and low reagent consumption. NKD is an organic compound belonging to the psychoactive stimulants used as an analeptic drugs. The proposed analytical procedure consists of few steps: dilution of urine or drug in distilled water, centrifugation for 2 min (12,000 g ), separation by MEKC and ultraviolet‐absorbance detection of NKD at 260 nm. The background electrolyte used was 0.035 mol/L pH 9 borate buffer with the addition of 0.05 mol/L sodium dodecyl sulfate and 6.5% ACN. Effective separation was achieved within 5.5 min under a voltage of 21 kV (~90 μA) using a standard fused‐silica capillary (effective length 51 cm, 75 μm i.d.). The determined limit of detection for NKD in urine was 1 μmol/L (0.18 μg/mL). The calibration curve obtained for NKD in urine showed linearity in the range 4–280 μmol/L (0.71–49.90 μg/mL), with R² 0.9998. The RSD of the points of the calibration curve varied from 5.4 to 9.5%. The analytical procedure was successfully applied to analysis of pharmaceutical formulation and spiked urine samples from healthy volunteers.