Sample pretreatment and determination of non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) in pharmaceutical formulations and biological samples (blood, plasma, erythrocytes) by HPLC-UV-MS and micro-HPLC.

The article discusses the qualitative and quantitative determination of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like salicin, salicylic acid, tenoxicam, ketorolac, piroxicam, tolmetin, naproxen, flurbiprofen, diclofenac and ibuprofen by reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) and micro-HPLC (micro-HPLC) hyphenated with UV-absorbance and mass spectrometric detection. Both detection methods delivered calibration plots with good linearity (r(2) > 0.9800), limits of detection in the low nanogram range and recovery rates between 94 and 104 %. For the analysis of biological samples such as blood, plasma and erythrocytes liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) and solid phase extraction (SPE) on the basis of new synthesized glycidylmethacrylate/divinylbenzene copolymer (GMA/DVB) particles and commercially available material on the basis of poly(divinylbenzene-co-N-vinylpyrrolidone) copolymer were investigated. Finally the use of a micro-HPLC system with separation columns in the range of 8 cm x 200 microm I.D. for the determination of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) is presented, emphasizing on the type of column and sample amount needed.