Determination of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in human specimens by capillary zone electrophoresis and micellar electrokinetic chromatography

Therapeutic drug monitoring of anti‐inflammatory drugs is necessary for the identification of the agents that cause toxic events and for the decision on the treatment for intoxication. Recently, capillary electrophoresis (CE) has been developed for the simple and rapid analyses of a variety of chemical agents. Micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) can separate acidic, neutral and basic anti‐inflammatory drugs in serum. Furthermore, serum samples are directly applied to the CE system without any pretreatments, and some anti‐inflammatory drugs can be separated from serum albumin in the MEKC analysis. On the other hand, capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) enables us to determine a few μg/mL levels of acidic anti‐inflammatory drugs with simple running buffer and stacking technique. A rapid and simultaneous determination of several analgesic anti‐inflammatory agents, including ibuprofen, acetaminophen, indomethacin, and salicylic acid in human serum has been developed by using CZE. Therefore, the CZE and MEKC analysis may become a potentially useful alternative to high‐performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and fluorescence polarization immunoassay (FPIA) for therapeutic drug monitoring, particularly in serum of patients suffering from intoxication by overdosage of nonsteroidal anti‐inflammatory agents.