High Performance Liquid Chromatographic Determination of Pentamidine in Plasma

Abstract

A high performance liquid chromatographic method for quantitating pentamidine in plasma has been developed. Sample clean-up involved precipitating plasma with acetonitrile containing the internal standard, hexamidine. The supernatant was passed through a C₈ Bond Elut column and eluted with a methanolic solution of sodium 1-heptanesulfonate. The eluate was then analyzed on an Altex C₈ column with a mobile phase consisting of 45% CH₈CN, 0.02% detramethylammonium chloride and 0.1% H₃PO₄. Using fluorescence detection (EX: 275 nm and EM: 340 nm), the detection limit was 1.25 ng/ml for 0.5 ml of plasma. The coefficients of variation for interday and intraday were around 10%.