New, high-sensitivity high-performance liquid chromatographic method for the determination of acyclovir in human plasma, using fluorometric detection.

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method for the determination of acyclovir in human plasma has been developed. It is the first published chromatographic method capable of determining acyclovir in plasma with sufficient sensitivity and for sufficiently long periods of time following oral administration of a standard dose of acyclovir during pharmacokinetic investigations. Following precipitations of the proteins with perchloric acid, the sample is chromatographed with a strongly acidic mobile phase on a reversed-phase column, and is then subjected to fluorometric detection (excitation 260 nm, emission 375 nm). The determination limit is 6-10 ng/ml human plasma. The calibration is linear in the range 10-12,400 ng/ml plasma, with the coefficients of variation less than 8%. The absolute recovery rate is between 102 and 113%. This method has already been used to analyse several thousand plasma samples.