F. Albertioni et al., ANALYSIS OF AZATHIOPRINE AND 6-MERCAPTOPURINE IN PLASMA IN RENAL-TRANSPLANT RECIPIENTS AFTER ADMINISTRATION WITH ORAL AZATHIOPRINE, Journal of liquid chromatography, 18(20), 1995, pp. 3991-4005
Citations number
26
Categorie Soggetti
Chemistry Analytical","Biochemical Research Methods
Studies on the pharmacokinetics of azathioprine (AZA) and its main met
abolite, 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP) in patients treated with oral AZA, su
ch as renal transplant recipients, require an analytical method with a
high sensitivity. Since the substances differ substantially in their
physicochemical properties, it is hardly feasible to develop an extrac
tion procedure and select chromatographic conditions for the simultane
ous determination of both substances. Therefore, we have developed two
specific chromatographic assays for determination of AZA and 6-MP in
plasma. A solid-phase extraction (C-8 Isolute) procedure was used for
AZA with guaneran as internal standard (IS), while 6-MP was purified o
n mercurial cellulose and 6-mercaptopurine arabinoside was used as IS.
Chromatographic analyses were achieved using C-8 and C-18 reversed ph
ase columns for AZA and 6-MP, respectively. The methods were reproduci
ble with intra- and inter-assay coefficients of variations below 6%. T
he average recoveries of AZA, 6-MP and their respective IS were higher
than 79%. The limit of quantitation of AZA and 6-MP in plasma is 0.2
ng.