Rapid determination of pseudoephedrine in human plasma by high-performance liquid chromatography

A rapid high-performance liquid chromatographic method for the quantitation of pseudoephedrine in human plasma is presented. The sample preparation involved liquid–liquid extraction of pseudoephedrine from alkalised plasma with hexane–isoamylalcohol (9:1, v/v) and back-extraction of the drug to 0.02 M hydrochloric acid. Liquid chromatography was performed on an octadecylsilica column (50×4 mm, 5 μm particles); the mobile phase consisted of acetonitrile–phosphate buffer containing 0.1% of triethylamine, pH 2.4 (5:95, v/v). The run time was 4 min. The spectrophotometric detector was operated at 195 nm. Codeine was used as the internal standard. The limit of quantitation was 5.8 ng/ml using 0.5 ml of plasma. Within-day and between-day precision expressed by relative standard deviation was less than 7% and inaccuracy did not exceed 8%. The assay was applied to the analysis of samples from a pharmacokinetic study.