High-throughput liquid-chromatography method with fluorescence detection for reciprocal determination of furosemide or norfloxacin in human plasma

A simple, high-throughput, highly selective and sensitive HPLC-FLD method for isolation and determination of
furosemide and/or norfloxacin in human plasma samples following a simple organic solvent deproteinization step with acetonitrile as sample ‘clean-up’ procedure is reported. One of the two drug substances plays the internal standard role for the determination of the other. Separation of analyte and internal standard was achieved in less than 5.3 min (injection to injection) on a Chromolith Performance RP-18e column, using an aqueous component containing 0.015 mol/L sodium heptane-sulfonate and 0.2% triethylamine brought to pH = 2.5 with H3PO4. The composition of the mobile phase was: acetonitrile–methanol–aqueous component
= 70:15:15 (v/v/v) and the flow-rate was set up to 3 mL/min. The chromatographic method applied to the determination of furosemide relies on fluorescent detection parameters of 235 nm for the excitation wavelength, and 402 nm for the emission wavelength. In case of norfloxacin, the excitation wavelength is set up to 268 nm and the emission wavelength is set up to 445 nm. The overall method leads to quantitation limits of about 27 ng/mL for furosemide, and 19.5 ng/mL for norfloxacin, using an injection volume of 250 μL. The method was applied to the bioequivalence study of two furosemide-containing formulations.