Rapid determination of artemisinin and related analogues using high-performance liquid chromatography and an evaporative light scattering detector

Artemisinin and its analogues are a class of compounds of current interest in the treatment of drug-resistant malaria. These antimalarials are prefere ntially taken up into malaria infected erythrocytes as compared to uninfect ed erythrocytes, a fact that may represent an important parameter in drug p otency. Numerous methods for the analysis of specific artemisinin analogues have been developed, but most are not widely adaptable to a large range of analogues. In this paper we describe a high-performance liquid chromatogra phic method developed and validated for artemisinin and several analogues o f artemisinin using a readily available evaporative light scattering detect or. This quantitation method was found to be straight forward, rapid, inexp ensive and reproducible. Standard calibration curves constructed for six ar temisinin compounds were linear with the detection limit determined between 6 and 60 ng. The intra- and inter-day accuracy were found to be 2.75% and 4.15%, respectively with less than 3% variation in precision. The validated assay was applied to a mixture of artemisinin derivatives, where they were easily separated and quantitated. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science BN. All rights reserved.