GC Determination of Famotidine, Ranitidine, Cimetidine, and Metformin in Pharmaceutical Preparations and Serum Using Methylglyoxal as Derivatizing Reagent

Abstract

A capillary gas chromatography (GC) procedure has been developed for the determination of four pharmaceutical preparations (famotidine, ranitidine, cimetidine, and metformin) after precolumn derivatization with methylglyoxal (MGo). GC was carried out using an HP-5 column (30 m × 0.32 mm id) at an initial column temperature of 90 °C for 2 min, followed by heating rate of 25 °C min−1 up to 265 °C. Nitrogen flow rate was 2.5 mL min−1 with split ratio 10:1. A linear calibration curve was obtained within 50–1,000 ng mL−1 and the limit of detection (LOD) was within 17–25 ng mL−1. The derivatization, GC elution, and separation were repeatable in terms of retention time and peak height/peak area with relative standard deviation within ±4.6 %. The procedure was applied to the determination of the drugs in pharmaceutical preparations and the sera of volunteers who were given oral doses of the drugs. The results of the analysis agreed with the labeled values of the pharmaceutical preparations and were 147–4,903 ng mL−1 in serum with an RSD within 1.0–4.2 %, after ingestion of a single dose of 40–500 mg of active ingredient in a tablet.