High Performance Liquid Chromatographic Assay of Cefsulodin, Cefotiam and Cefmenoxime in Serum and Urine

A high performance liquid chromatographic method for the analysis of cefsulodin (CFS), cefotiam (CTM) and cefmenoxime (CMX) in human blood or urine samples was established. The procedure is simple, and includes deproteinization with methanol, separation of the supernatant by centrifugation and/or filtration, and injection onto a reversed phase column. The extent of recovery of added drugs and the reproducibility of the procedure demonstrated that the method could replace the conventional biological assay. The minimum detectable amounts of cephalosporins in serum are 0.05 μg/ml for CMX, 0.1 μg/ml for CTM and 0.2 μg/ml for CFS. In urine samples, cephalosporins can be detected at levels of 2 μg/ml or more. The sensitivity seems to be good enough for clinical application of the method considering the usual dosages of the drugs. Examples of the clinical application of the method are also reported.