Liquid chromatographic determination of pinacidil, a new antihypertensive drug, and its major metabolite, pinacidil N-oxide, in plasma.

Two procedures are described, one for the determination of pinacidil, the other for the determination of both pinacidil and its metabolite, pinacidil N-oxide, in plasma. When only parent drug levels are required, the plasma proteins are precipitated with acetonitrile, the solids discarded and the supernatant is evaporated to dryness. The residue is then reconstituted for analysis. For the determination of both drug and metabolite, the analytes are selectively retained from plasma on a solid-phase extraction column and eluted with methanol. After evaporation to dryness, the residue is reconstituted in mobile phase. Both procedures utilize reversed-phase liquid chromatographic separations with ultraviolet detection. The limits of detection are 10 ng/ml pinacidil in plasma and 5 ng/ml each of pinacidil and pinacidil N-oxide in plasma for the two procedures, respectively.