Development of superparamagnetic high-magnetization C18-functionalized magnetic silica nanoparticles as sorbents for enrichment and determination of methylprednisolone in rat plasma by high performance liquid chromatography

In this study, a novel extraction and enrichment technique based on superparamagnetic high-magnetization C18-functionalized magnetic silica nanoparticles (C18-MNPs) as sorbents was successfully developed for the determination of methylprednisolone (MP) in rat plasma by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The synthesized silica-coated magnetite modified with chlorodimethyl-n-octadecylsilane was about 320 nm in diameter with strong magnetism and high surface area. It provided an efficient way for extraction and concentration of MP in the samples through hydrophobic interaction by the interior C18 groups. Moreover, MP adsorbed with C18-MNPs could be simply and rapidly isolated through placing a strong magnet on the bottom of container, and then easily eluted from C18-MNPs by n-hexane solution. Extraction conditions such as amounts of C18-MNPs added, adsorption time and desorption solvent, were investigated. Method validations including linear range, detection limit, precision, and recovery were also studied. The results showed that the proposed method based on C18-MNPs was a simple, accurate and high efficient approach for the analysis of MP in the complex plasma samples.