Fast simultaneous determination of trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole by capillary zone electrophoresis with capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection

The association of trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole is a very effective with antibiotic properties, and commonly used in the treatment of a variety of infections. Due to the importance in diseases treatment of humans and also of animals, the development of methods for their quantification in commercial formulations is highly desirable. In the present study, a rapid method for simultaneous determination of these compounds using CE with capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection was developed. A favorable working region for both analytes was from 12.5 to 200 mol/L (linear responses with R > 0.999 for N = 5). Other parameters calculated were sensitivity (1.28 +/- 0.10/1.45 +/- 0.11) min/(mol L), RSD (4.5%/2.0%), and LOD (1.1/3.3) mol/L for trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole, respectively. Under this condition, the total run time was only 2.6 min. The proposed method was applied to the determination of trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole in commercial samples and the results were compared to those obtained by using a HPLC pharmacopoeia method. This new method is advantageous for quality-control analyses of trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole in pharmaceuticals samples, because it is rapid and precise. Moreover, it is less laborious and demands minimum amounts of reagents in comparison to the recommended method.