Direct injection micellar liquid chromatographic determination of benzodiazepines in serum

A simple micellar liquid chromatographic (MLC) procedure is reported for the determination of several benzodiazepines in serum: bromazepam, diazepam, flunitrazepam, halazepam, medazepam, nitrazepam, oxazeparn and tetrazepam. The optimization studies have been made in C-18 and C-8 columns, using solutions containing sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) modified with butanol or pentanol as mobile phases. The method proposed for the determination of the benzodiazepines uses a hybrid micellar mobile phase of 0.06 M SDS-5% butanol-0.01 M phosphate buffer (pH 7) at 25degreesC, and UV detection (230 nm) in a C-18 column. The serum samples were injected directly, without any pretreatment, and eluted in less than 22 min, in accordance with their relative polarities, as indicated by their octanol-water partition coefficients. The limits of detection (ng ml(-1)) were within the ranges of 2-6 and 4-18 for aqueous and serum samples, respectively. Repeatability and intermediate precision were tested for three different concentrations of the drugs, and RSD (%) was below 10 for most of the assays. The MLC results were compared with those obtained from a conventional HPLC method using methanol-water 5:5 (v/v) which requires a previous extraction procedure. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.