Determination of the Newer Quinolones Levofloxacin and Moxifloxacin in Plasma by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography with Fluorescence Detection

Abstract

A simple, accurate, sensitive, and precise reversed-phase (RP) high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method with fluorescence detection allowing the sensitive and specific quantitation of the newer fluoroquinolones levofloxacin and moxifloxacin is described. Moxifloxacin is used as the internal standard for the determination of levofloxacin and vice versa. A single-step liquid-liquid extraction from human plasma is sufficient for both quinolones. The method is linear from 0.1 to 15 microg/mL and 0.2 to 7 microg/mL for levofloxacin and moxifloxacin, respectively, covering the clinically relevant plasma concentration range. The limits of quantitation are 0.05 microg/mL (levofloxacin) and 0.2 microg/mL (moxifloxacin). The method is successfully applied to plasma drug level monitoring in a volunteer receiving single therapeutic doses of levofloxacin or moxifloxacin at two different occasions.

Average bioequivalence of single 500 mg doses of two oral formulations of levofloxacin: a randomized, open-label, two-period crossover study in healthy adult Brazilian volunteers

“…For the determination of levofloxacin plasmatic levels, an accurate, precise and sensitive high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method with UV detection was developed and validated, based on previously described methods (Almeida et al, 2005;Baietto et al, 2009;Chien et al, 1997Chien et al, , 1998Conte et al, 2006;Djabarouti et al, 2004;Ji et al, 2006;Lee et al, 1997;Liang, Kays, Sowinski, 2002;Lubasch et al, 2000;Nemutlu et al, 2007;Schulte et al, 2006;Siewert, 2006;Wagenlehner et al, 2006;Wong, Juzwin, Flor, 1997;Zhou et al, 2007).…”

A Simple and Rapid Liquid Chromatography Method for Determination of Levofloxacin in Plasma

“…[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] While few methods are simple, some of the methods are quite cumbersome and time consuming. These methods have not checked for interference of antituberculosis drugs in their specificity experiment.…”

Fast and Sensitive RP-HPLC—Fluorescence Method for the Quantitative Analysis of Moxifloxacin in Rat Plasma and Its Application to a Preclinical Pharmacokinetic Study

“…Use of special additives in mobile phase composition, such as buffers associated to ion pair reagents [11,13], can eventually adsorb to the stationary phase and, thus, reduce column efficiency and lifetime. Time-consuming (13-28 min) isocratic or binary gradient elution methods are shown in the literature [6][7][8][10][11][12][13][14][15], which are not desirable for routine analysis. LC-MS/MS is an expensive technique which requires high investment in both equipment purchase and maintenance, and it may not be available in all analytical laboratories.…”

“…LC-MS/MS is an expensive technique which requires high investment in both equipment purchase and maintenance, and it may not be available in all analytical laboratories. Some methods for the quantification of MXF in plasma have low sensitivity (i.e., lower limit of quantification [LLOQ] ranging from 50-200 ng mL −1 ) [8,9,12,[14][15][16] or require a large amount of sample (0.4-1.2 mL of plasma) [5, 6, 8-11, 14, 17], which is not suitable for pharmacokinetic studies in small animals. In summary, most of these methods are expensive, tedious, time-consuming, and/or require prior separation procedure and sophisticated equipment.…”