The Determination of Selected Antibiotics, Antibacterials and Anticonvulsants by Voltammetric and Liquid Chromatographic Techniques

Abstract

Modern voltammetric techniques such as differential pulse polarography and square wave voltammetry can determine electroactive drugs such as antibiotics and antibacterials over a relatively wide concentration range of approximately three orders of magnitude with detection limits of 10^-7 – 10^-8 M. Such drugs as raw materials and as they are contained in formulations can be determined rapidly with a minimum of sample treatment prior to electro-analysis. Biological matrices containing drug traces as found in therapeutic drug monitoring, pharmacokinetics and forensic toxicology frequently require solvent extraction and/or other sample treatment procedures prior to voltammetric determination of the drug actives. The selectivity of the these determinations of raw materials formulations and biological matrices towards structurally related process impurities, degradation products and metabolities respectively is generally admitted to be poor.