Analysis of proguanil and its metabolites by application of the sweeping technique in micellar electrokinetic chromatography

The method of applying large sample volumes in micellar electrokinetic chromatography termed sweeping is applied to determine the conservative limits of detection of some basic drugs in plasma and urine. The biguanides proguanil, 4-chlorophenylbiguanide and cycloguanil are used as models of basic drugs and the limits of detection obtained compared with those previously reported for capillary zone electrophoresis using field-amplified sample injection (FASI) and also by LC using off-line preconcentration. It is found that the sweeping method can be applied to extracts of such biological matrices. The limits of detection obtained by sweeping are improved over FASI for plasma but not for urine and the limits of detection are higher than those reported for LC, for these compounds.