Direct determination of four fluoroquinolones, enoxacin, norfloxacin, ofloxacin, and ciprofloxacin, in pharmaceuticals and blood serum by HPLC

A rapid, accurate and sensitive method has been developed for the quantitative determination of four fluoroquinolone antimicrobial agents, enoxacin, norfloxacin, ofloxacin and ciprofloxacin, with high in-vitro activity against a wide range of Gram-negative and Gram-positive organisms. A Kromasil 100 C-8 250 mmx4 mm, 5 mum analytical column was used with an eluting system consisting of a mixture of CH3CN-CH3OH-citric acid 0.4 mol L-1 (7:15:78 %, v/v). Detection was performed with a variable wavelength UV-visible detector at 275 nm resulting in limits of detection: 0.02 ng per 20 muL injection for enoxacin and 0.01 ng for ofloxacin, norfloxacin and ciprofloxacin. Hydrochlorothiazide (HCT) was used as internal standard at a concentration of 2 ng muL(-1). A rectilinear relationship was observed up to 2 ng muL(-1) for enoxacin, 12 ng muL(-1) for ofloxacin, 3 ng muL(-1) for norfloxacin, and 5 ng muL(-1) for ciprofloxacin. Separation was achieved within 10min. The statistical evaluation of the method was examined by performing intra-day (n=8) and inter-day precision assays (n=8) and was found to be satisfactory with high accuracy and precision. The method was applied to the direct determination of the four fluoroquinolones in human blood serum. Sample pretreatment involved only protein precipitation with acetonitrile. Recovery of analytes in spiked samples was 97 +/- 6% over the range 0.1-0.5 ng muL(-1).