Experimental design methodologies to optimise the spectrofluorimetric determination of Losartan and Valsartan in human urine

A spectrofluorimetric method has been developed for the determination of two angiotensin II receptor antagonists (ARA II): Losartan and Valsartan. A fractional factorial design and a central composite design were used. The key factors considered in the optimization process were pH, temperature and emission slit width. Maximum fluorescent intensity was established as response for each experiment. The response surfaces confirmed the robustness of the method. A clean-up procedure was used for urine samples that consisted of a solid-phase extraction using C8 cartridges. The total analysis time was lower than 30 min. This method proved to be accurate (RE, 8%), precise (intra- and inter-day coefficients of variation were lower than 8% and sensitive enough (LOQ c.a. 0.5 μg ml⁻¹) to be applied to the determination of Losartan and Valsartan in urine samples.