Simultaneous high-performance liquid chromatography determination of carbamazepine and five of its metabolites in plasma of epileptic patients

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method with UV detection for the simultaneous analysis of the antiepileptic drug carbamazepine and five of its metabolites in human plasma has been developed. The analysis was carried out on a reversed-phase column (C₈, 150×4.6 mm I.D., 5 μm) using acetonitrile, methanol and a pH 1.9 phosphate buffer as the mobile phase. Under these chromatographic conditions, carbamazepine and its metabolites 10,11-dihydro-10,11-epoxycarbamazepine, 10,11-dihydro-10,11-dihydroxycarbamazepine, 2-hydroxycarbamazepine, 3-hydroxycarbamazepine and 10,11-dihydro-10-hydroxycarbamazepine are baseline separated in less than 18 min. The extraction of the analytes from plasma samples was performed by means of an original solid-phase extraction procedure using Oasis HLB cartridges. The method requires only 250 μl of plasma for one complete analysis. The repeatability (RSD%<2.4), intermediate precision (RSD%<3.5) and extraction yield (84.8–103.0%) were very good for all analytes. The method is suitable for reliable therapeutic drug monitoring of patients undergoing chronic treatment with carbamazepine and for kinetic–metabolic studies of this drug.