Highly sensitive high-performance liquid chromatographic determination method for a new erythromycin derivative, EM523, and its major metabolites in human plasma and urine using postcolumn tris(2,2'-bipyridine) ruthenium(III) chemiluminescence detection

A method for the simultaneous determination of de(N-methyl)-N-ethyl-8,9-anhydroerythromycin A 6,9-hemiacetal (EM523, I) and its three metabolites in human plasma and urine has been developed using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with chemiluminescence (CL) detection. Plasma and urine samples spiked with erythromycin as an internal standard were extracted with a mixture of dichloromethane and diethyl ether under alkaline conditions. The organic layer was evaporated under a stream of nitrogen gas. The reconstituted sample was injected into an HPLC apparatus and separated on an ODS column using a gradient elution method. The eluate was reacted on-line with a mixture of tris(2,2'-bipyridine) ruthenium(II) and peroxodisulfate, and the generated CL intensity was detected. Optimization of the CL reaction conditions resulted in a sensitive and stable CL intensity for the determination of I and its metabolites. The recovery of each compound from human plasma and urine, and the sensitivity, linearity, accuracy and precision of the method were satisfactory. The lower limits of quantitation for each compound using 0.2 ml of plasma and 0.1 ml of urine were 1 and 10 ng/ml, respectively. This method has been used for the determination of I in samples from clinical trials.