Trends in Sample Preparation for the HPLC Determination of Penicillins in Biofluids

INTRODUCTION Penicillins constitute a category of bicyclic organic compounds which are characterized by the presence of a β-lactam ring fused with a thiazoline ring, as shown in Figure 1. They appear to be highly effective against bacterial infections. Therefore antibiotics are extensively used by humans and animals by ingestion. These drugs inhibits the enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of the peptidoglycan in the cell wall. the enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of the peptidoglycan in the cell wall. Penicillins are classified, based on the mode of their activity, or according to their efficacy against bacterial β-lactamases, so they can be used as narrow-spectrum antibiotics. There is constantly a great interest for the quantitative determination of penicillins in biofluids for various reasons as for example, the knowledge of the time above the minimum inhibitory concentration (t > MIC) the most determinant ABSTRACT: Penicillin antibiotics are widely used for antibacterial treatment. Quantitative determination of these drugs in bio-fluids is constantly under a great need. HPLC is the more common analytical technique for this purpose. During the last decades, Green Analytical Chemistry is on the rise and is proven a new tendency. Sample preparation, as a crucial step of the analytical procedure, is strongly affected and determined by this new scientific perspective. Therefore, a variety of new microextraction techniques have been developed, which can be combined with the chromatographic determination of biofluids. In this review, current trends and methods of sample preparation are presented, which are appropriate to be used in order to extract penicillin antibiotics from biological samples prior to their HPLC separation. These methods are compatible with the principles of green analytical chemistry, which is an extreme necessity of our era, for both environmental and economic reasons. The evolution and establishment of these microextraction analytical techniques for sample preparation constitute a significant field of modern research due to their importance in the whole analytical procedure. Bioanalytical applications are set in the spotlight.