Direct pharmaceutical analysis of bisphosphonates by capillary electrophoresis

Bisphosphonate compounds have been studied as a class of potential drugs for the treatment of various bone diseases. However, the analyses of these compounds are problematic because most of them do not contain strong chromophores. Based on the unique structures of these compounds, we have employed a capillary electrophoresis (CE) technique for the characterization of these compounds in pharmaceutical dosage formulations. In this study, two CE methods were developed for the determination of a bisphosphonate compound, 2-thioethane-1,1-bisphosphonic acid. The first method involved the use of an uncoated column, a phosphate buffer, and hydrostatic injection with direct UV absorbance detection. The method showed excellent resolution and precision with a reasonable detection limit of 30 mu g/ml. Sensitivity was further improved using a glycerol-coated column, together with a phosphate buffer of higher concentration and electrokinetic injection under sample stacking conditions. This modified method revealed a significant improvement in sensitivity with a detection limit of about 50 ng/ml. Both methods demonstrated high simplicity and excellent reproducibility and were successfully applied to the quantitative analyses of pharmaceutical dosing solutions. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.