Simultaneous determination of isoniazid, pyrazinamide, rifampicin and acetylisoniazid in human plasma by high-performance liquid chromatography.

A sensitive and accurate high-performance liquid-chromatography method was developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of pyrazinamide (PZA), isoniazid (INH), rifampicin (RFP) and acetylisoniazid (AcINH) in human plasma. Separation was performed on a Max-RP C(12) column using gradient elution and a flow-rate program. The mobile phase was methanol-acetonitrile-buffer (20 mM of heptanesulfonic acid sodium, pH 2.5) with a ratio of 10:8:82 (v/v/v) at the initial phase. All calibration curves had good linearity (r(2) > 0.99) between the test ranges. The intra- and inter-day precision was less than 8.8% in good accuracy (<15%). The limit of detection with a signal-to-noise (S/N) of 3 was 0.014, 0.009, 0.023 and 0.054 µg mL(-1) for PZA, AcINH, INH and RFP, respectively. The method was selective, sensitive and reliable, and is a good alternative for routine therapeutic drug monitoring of the four compounds during the treatment of tuberculosis patients.