Determination of the antifungal agent voriconazole in human plasma using a simple column-switching high-performance liquid chromatography and its application to a pharmacokinetic study.

A simple column-switching high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method that does not require any complicated pretreatment has been developed to determine voriconazole in human plasma samples. An internal standard (IS) and borate buffer (pH 9.0) were added to plasma samples, which were then injected directly into the column-switching HPLC system using MAYI-ODS as a pre-column. The calibration curve for voriconazole showed good linearity in the range of 0.2-10 mug/ml in human plasma. The mean RSD (%) value of intra-day (n=6) and inter-day (n=5) precision were less than 5.4% and 8.2%, respectively. This system could make more than three hundred successive, accurate measurements when a washing step with ammonium acetate solution was added. This method was successfully applied to measure the therapeutic voriconazole level in patients' plasma, and was used in a study of voriconazole pharmacokinetics after oral administration.