Voltage-step pulsed electromembrane extraction followed by high performance liquid chromatography analysis for simultaneous determination of paracetamol and codeine

ABSTRACT

The simultaneous extraction of paracetamol, as an acidic drug, and codeine, as a basic drug from plasma samples was performed via a voltage-step pulsed electromembrane extraction method followed by high-performance liquid chromatography. 1-Octanol and 2-nitrophenyl octyl ether, containing 5% di-(2-ethylhexyl) phosphate were utilized as supported liquid membranes to ensure the efficient extraction of paracetamol and codeine, respectively. The optimized parameters including total extraction time of 20 min, initial voltage of 20 V, final voltage of 100 V, partial ON time of 55 s and partial OFF time of 20 s were obtained. Under the optimal conditions, the proposed technique provided excellent linearity ranges with regression coefficients of more than 0.999 within the concentration ranges of 0.500–5.000 and 0.020–0.500 µg mL⁻¹ for paracetamol, and codeine, respectively. Detection limits of 0.200 and 0.005 µg mL⁻¹, quantification limits of 0.500 and 0.020 µg mL⁻¹ and relative standard deviations of 8.5% and 8.0% were obtained for paracetamol and codeine in plasma samples, respectively. As a result, the proposed technique serves as a convenient, selective, and rapid sample preparation process for the simultaneous extraction and determination of paracetamol and codeine in plasma samples.

KEYWORDS:

• Pulsed electromembrane extraction
• codeine
• paracetamol

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the research Council of University of Alzahra University for financial support of this work. The authors also would like to acknowledge Dr Zahra Talebpour for using her HPLC instrument.

Declaration of Interest Statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.