Sensitive high-performance liquid chromatographic assay for aminoglycosides in biological matrices enables the direct estimation of bacterial drug uptake.

Following the development of a sensitive high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) assay for gentamicin in biological matrices, the utility of this assay for the determination of other clinically important aminoglycosides (neomycin, netilmicin and sisomicin) in bacterial culture media or plasma is demonstrated. The high sensitivity of the assay enables direct measurement of the aminoglycoside content of bacterial cells cultured in the presence of unlabelled drug.