Objective: To establish a method based on restricted access media-high performance liquid chromatography for direct online sample injection and detection of plasma and urine furosemide in rats.
Methods: The column of restricted access media was used as the pre-treatment column and a C18 column as the analytical column. The mobile phase of the pre- treatment column was water-methanol (95:5, V/V) with a volume percentage of formic acid of 0.1%. The mobile phase of the analytical column was methanol-water (65:35, V/V) for plasma and methanol-water (55:45, V/V) for urine samples, all containing a volume percentage of formic acid of 0.1% with a flow rate of 1 ml/min. The detection wavelength was 274 nm and the column temperature was maintained at 25 degrees celsius.
Results: The calibration curve showed an excellent linear relationship in rat plasma furosemide concentration range of 0.1-3.2 µg/ml (r=0.9995) and in urine concentration range of 0.5-32 µg/ml (r=0.9991). The average recoveries of furosemide at 3 spiked levels ranged from 101.82% to 113.36% for plasma and from 98.75% to 112.27% for urine samples. The detection showed good intra- and inter-day assay precisions and accuracies with the relative standard deviations all below 5%. The pharmacokinetic parameters AUC(0→24) was 6.265 g/(ml·h) with a t(1/2) of 2.447 h and a C(Max) of 1.414 g/ml. The mean cumulative excretory rate of furosemide in the urine of rats over 24 h was 32.50%-39.08%.
Conclusion: Detection of furosemide in plasma and urine samples using restricted access media-high performance liquid chromatography is simple and efficient and allows direct online injection of the samples.