Determination of Pyridostigmine in Human Plasma by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography

Abstract

An easy to perform, specific, reproducible and sensitive high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method to measure pyridostigmine concentration in human plasma was developed and validated. Sample clean-up consists of ion-pair extraction into dichloromethane in the presence of neostigmine as internal standard, followed by back extraction into an aqueous phase. Mean recovery of 110% (with a standard deviation of 10%) was determined for concentrations of 5 – 100 ng/ml. Chromatography on a 125·4 mm CN-propyl column using a mobile phase composed of 10% acetonitrile in 3.5×10⁻⁴M NaH₂PO₄ and UV detection at 270 nm, yields clean chromatograms without any interferences from endogenous plasma components. Using 1 ml plasma samples the method has a limit of detection (LD) of 3 ng/ml, with %CV (precision) and bias (accuracy) ≥ 10% for concentrations in the range of 0–100 ng/ml. The method is being used in human pharmacokinetic studies of oral dosage forms of pyridostigmine.