Determination of nevirapine, an HIV-1 non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor, in human plasma by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography.

A sensitive and rapid high-performance liquid chromatography method has been developed to measure the levels of the HIV-1 non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor nevirapine in human plasma. The sample pre-treatment consists of a protein precipitation with perchloric acid. A Hypersil ODS column is used at ambient temperature and a wavelength of 280 nm is used for ultraviolet detection. The mobile phase contains acetonitrile and a 60 mM phosphate buffer pH 4.5 (30:70, v/v). The detection limit of the method is 0.05 mg/l using 150 microl of plasma. The lower and upper limit of quantitation are 0.1 mg/l and 10 mg/l, respectively. The average recovery of nevirapine is 101.8% with a variation of 4.6%. The average inter-assay precision is 2.4%, the average intra-assay precision 2.9% and the average accuracy 97%.