Abstract
PURPOSE: Electromembrane extraction is a new membrane-based extraction method in which charged compounds are extracted by an electric field. So far, this method has been used to extract and isolate a variety of acidic and basic drugs from various samples, including blood and plasma. However, in this procedure, it is not yet clear whether only unbound fraction of a drug is extracted or the total drug. The aim of this study is to reveal the nature of drug extraction in the presence of plasma proteins. METHODS: To determine the nature of the extraction, the electromembrane extraction was performed from plasma solutions of phenytoin with concentrations 0.03 and 1.0 μg/mL, then the result was compared with the values obtained from the electromembrane extraction of ultrafiltrate of the same solutions (free concentration) and protein-free ultrafiltrate of plasma with final concentration of 0.03 and 1.0 μg/mL (total concentration). For this purpose, EME followed by capillary electrophoresis coupled with diode array detection was optimized and validated. RESULTS: The results showed that the electromembrane extraction method was only able to extract the unbound fraction of phenytoin from plasma samples. The method was validated over a concentration range of 0.03-4 μg/mL. The inter and intra-assay precisions were less than 6.7%. The phenytoin protein binding was also determined to be in agreement with the literature data and confirms the validity of this method. CONCLUSION: This sensitive and quick EME approach for determining the free concentration of a phenytoin, can be a good alternative to classic methods for therapeutic drug monitoring and pharmacokinetic studies.