Liquid-chromatographic determination of five orally active cephalosporins--cefixime, cefaclor, cefadroxil, cephalexin, and cephradine--in human serum.

We report an isocratic "high-performance" liquid-chromatographic (HPLC) procedure for measurement of five orally administered cephalosporins (cefixime, cefaclor, cefadroxil, cephalexin, and cephradine) in 0.1 mL of human serum. Serum protein is precipitated with acetonitrile, the sample is centrifuged, and the supernate is evaporated under nitrogen. The residue is reconstituted in 0.1 mL of mobile phase, and 50 to 80 microL of this is injected onto a reversed-phase Altex Ultrasphere Octyl (C8) column. The five cephalosporins are resolved by elution with a pH 2.6 mobile phase of methanol/monobasic phosphate buffer (20/80) by vol), flow rate 2 mL/min. The column effluent is monitored at 240 nm. Cefixime serves as the internal standard for the analysis of the four other compounds, cephalexin as the internal standard for cefixime. We used two standard curves for all compounds: a low-range curve for concentrations commonly observed clinically and a higher-range curve for higher concentrations. The former were linear from 1.0 to 10 mg/L for cefaclor, cefadroxil, cephalexin, and cephradine and from 0.1 to 1 mg/L for cefixime. The high-concentration curves were linear from 1 to 10 mg/L for cefixime and from 10 to 100 mg/L for the other compounds. The detection limits were 0.1 mg/L for cefixime, 1 mg/L for the other cephalosporins. Mean within-run and day-to-day CVs were always less than 15% for all compounds studied.