Clinical Evaluation of Acetylcysteine as a Mucolytic Agent in Cystic Fibrosis

Abstract

A sensitive and rapid high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was developed to enantioseparation of N-acetyl-dl-cysteine after precolumn derivatization using o-phthaldialdehyde and primary aliphatic amines. Seven polysaccharide-based chiral columns were tested in a reversed phase mode. Under the optimal chromatographic conditions, N-acetyl-dl-cysteine derivatives were completely enantioseparated on Chiralcel OZ-3R column with the resolution more than 2.5. The impact of various primary aliphatic amine additives as co-reagents (ethyl-, 1-propyl-, 1-butyl-, 1-pentylamine, (R)-sec-butylamine, tert-butylamine, isobutylamine, cyclopropyl-, cyclobutyl-, cyclopentyl and cyclohexylamine) used in precolumn derivatization step on the retention behavior (retention factor, selectivity and column efficiency) of N-acetyl-dl-cysteine derivatives was investigated. The effect of chromatographic conditions including acetonitrile content in the mobile phase, mobile phase pH, salt concentration in the mobile phase and column temperature on the retention and selectivity was investigated. The developed method was properly validated in terms of linearity, sensitivity (limit of detection and limit of quantification), accuracy, precision, intermediate precision and selectivity according to International Council for Harmonisation (ICH) of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use guidelines using internal normalization procedure. Proposed HPLC method was successfully applied to the determination of optical purity in commercially available N-acetyl-L-cysteine samples.