Simultaneous determination of ticarcillin and clavulanate in rabbit serum and tissue cage fluid by liquid chromatography

A gradient elution HPLC method with a wavelength switch technique was developed to simultaneously analyze the β-lactam ticarcillin and the β-lactamase inhibitor clavulanate in rabbit serum and tissue cage fluid (TCF). A C18 reversed-phase column with a programmable UV detector changing the wavelength from 218 to 254 nm at 9 min was used for chromatographic separation. The mobile phase consisted of acetonitrile, phosphate buffer and tetrabutylammonium hydrogen sulfate by following a gradient elution program at a flow-rate of 1 ml/min. Sample processing was carried out with liquid–liquid extraction. Good linearity, recoveries, precision and accuracy were obtained. The ranges of the standard curves were 1–100 μg/ml for ticarcillin, and 0.2–20 μg/ml for clavulanate. This assay has been successfully applied to analyze ticarcillin and clavulanate in rabbit serum and tissue cage fluid samples from a pharmacokinetic study.