Solid-phase extraction combined with dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction/HPLC-UV as a sensitive and efficient method for extraction, pre-concentration and simultaneous determination of antiretroviral drugs nevirapine, efavirenz and nelfinavir in pharmaceutical formulations and biological samples

Abstract

Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of antiretroviral drugs requires accurate and precise analysis of their trace amounts in plasma samples. Solid-phase extraction (SPE) coupled with dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction based on solidification of floating organic drop (DLLME-SFO) was introduced as a simple and sensitive method for extraction, pre-concentration and simultaneous determination of efavirenz (EFV), nelfinavir (NFV) and nevirapine (NVP) in human plasma and pharmaceutical formulations by using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with UV detection. A response surface methodology (RSM) based on central composite design (CCD) was used for optimizing the main variables in the extraction procedure. Under the optimum experimental conditions, the calibration curves were linear in the range of 0.1–400 ng mL−1 with correlation coefficients from 0.9982 to 0.9997 and limits of detection (at S/N = 3) of 0.03 to 0.07 ng mL−1. Moreover the intra-day and inter-day precision (RSD%) were in the range of 2.2–4.2% and 3.1–5.2%, respectively. The enrichment factors and relative recoveries of the anti-HIV drugs were 459–1507 and 93.7–105.4%. The method was successfully applied to the simultaneous determination of the trace amounts of the antiretroviral drugs in blood plasma and pharmaceutical formulations.