Abstract:
Two high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) methods using either absorbance (UV) or electrochemical detection (ECD) were developed for the determination of dihydroartemisinin (DHA) in drug samples. Two isomers of DHA, the C10-OH α- and β- epimers were separated on a Waters C8 column using a mobile phase of acetonitrile-water (50:50, v/v), with ultraviolet detection (UV) at 200 nm. For ECD, the detector was operated in the reductive mode using a glassy carbon electrode and a Ag/AgCl reference electrode under argon gas to exclude oxygen. This detection system also required manual and electro polishing to activate the glassy carbon electrode. An investigation of DHA epimerization in various solvents at room temperature was also studied using UV detection. The rate of epimerization and ratio of α/β isomers are dependent on the polarity of the solvent. The very fast epimerization of β-DHA (the epimer form in solid state) to α-DHA and the predominance of α-DHA in phosphate buffered saline, pH 7.3 (existing as 100%α- DHA) were observed, this indicated that the α-DHA should be the major form of DHA in human plasma. In mixed solvents of methanol or acetonitrile with water or acetate buffer, pH 5.0, the α/β ratios increased with time reaching an equilibrium within 2 hr. The α/β ratio in methanol is 2.55±0.10 which is larger than in acetonitrile (α/β ratio = 0.06±0.02) because the higher polarity of methanol. The sum of the α- and β-epimer peak areas was used for quantitative analysis of DHA in drug samples. This method gave a linear calibration curve of standard DHA concentration between 20-400 ppm (r 2 = 1) with a detection limit of 0.9±0.1 ppm. The percent recovery of spiked standard DHA to the sample was in the range 97.0- 103.5%. The results of the HPLC analysis with ECD showed that the stability and activity of the glassy carbon electrode in amperometric mode was reduced during analysis. Detection using the pulse mode was attempted in order to overcome this problem. However, optimization of this detection did not increase the sensitivity of the method. Thus electrochemical detection was found to be unsuitable for analysis of DHA in drug samples