Drug Monitoring and Toxicology: Quantification of Antifungal Drug Voriconazole in Human Plasma and Serum by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography with Fluorescence Detection

Abstract

This paper describes a simple and rapid high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method with fluorescence detection (FL) for the determination of voriconazoleconcentration in human plasma and serum. Ketoconazole is selected as the internal standard. Acetonitrile alone is used to precipitate protein and extractvoriconazole and ketoconazole in human plasma and serum using a single dilution step procedure. Following protein precipitation and extraction, voriconazoleand ketoconazole in the extract are quantitated by injectingdirectlyonto the HPLC system. Limit of quantitation and linearity (0.1-10 µg/mL) of the method adequately cover the therapeutic range for appropriate drug monitoring. This method has shownsome essential improvementssuch as allowing a small portion of the extract to be analyzed (10 µL) and completing an isocratic chromatography in