POROUS GRAPHITIC CARBON COLUMN IN QUANTITATION OF CAFFEINE IN PRETERM INFANTS’ SERUM SAMPLES
ADELA-VALERIA NEAMȚU 1, COSTEL-VALENTIN MANDA 2*, OCTAVIAN CROITORU 2, MONICA DENISA ELENA POPESCU 2, DANIELA MARIA CALUCICĂ 2, JOHNY NEAMȚU 2, ANDREI BIȚĂ 2, LILIANA STANCA 1, MIRELA-ANIȘOARA SIMINEL 1, SIMONA-DANIELA NEAMȚU 2
1 Faculty of Medicine, University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Craiova, Petru Rareș Street, 200638, Craiova, Romania
2 Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Craiova, Petru Rareș Street, 200638, Craiova, Romania
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Caffeine is a medicine widely used in preventing apnoea in preterm infants. Despite its general use, clinical trials are lacking. Pharmacokinetic data related to this category of patients are not available in the specialised literature. These facts lead to an urgent need for simple analysis methods, available to any laboratory for serum caffeine dosing in preterm neonates. So far, authors have presented some specific and sensitive LC-MS (or tandem MS) analytical methods for the determination of caffeine in different types of biological samples. Within this work, a liquid chromatographic technique using SPE with Oasis PRiME HLB® cartridges as sample preparation procedure was validated. The analytical column was an unconventional porous graphitic carbon column (HypercarbTM) at 60°C column compartment temperature. Adenosine was used as internal standard. Mobile phase consisted of an optimised gradient (acetonitrile:methanol/tetrahydrofuran) with triethanolamine as mobile phase additive. Analysis run-time, including re-equilibration of the column was 13 min. Diode array detection at 273 nm was used in quantitation. Method validation was performed according to ICH guidelines. Moreover, the method was applied in determining blood serum levels of caffeine in 8 real serum samples collected from premature newborns.
