Comparison of different sorbent materials for solid-phase extraction of selected drugs in human urine analyzed by UHPLC–UV

• UHPLC–UV method was developed and validated for determination of 13 drugs.
• Seventeen SPE cartridges were tested for the isolation of drugs from urine.
• Chromatographic conditions were optimized to obtain short analysis time.
• The SPE–UHPLC–UV procedure can be used to therapeutic drugs monitoring.

A procedure based on solid-phase extraction (SPE) followed by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) with UV detection has been developed for the analysis of multiple drugs in human urine. The compounds evaluated were aliskiren, prasugrel, rivaroxaban, prednisolone, propranolol, ketoprofen, nifedipine, naproxen, terbinafine, ibuprofen, diclofenac, sildenafil and acenocoumarol. Seventeen different solid phase extraction (SPE) cartridges were tested to evaluate their applicability for the isolation of drugs from human urine. Comparison were recovery of different drugs and reproducibility. The samples were analyzed by UHPLC using a Poroshell 120 EC-C18 column and acetonitrile −0.05% TFA in water as the mobile phase under gradient elution conditions.SPE combined with UHPLC–UV allowed the determination of drugs over a linear range of 0.01–30.0 μg/mL, with limits of detection at 0.003–0.217 μg/mL and precision of 0.8–7.1%. Phenyl (C6H5) sorbent was found to provide the most effective clean-up, removing the greatest amount of interfering substance and simultaneously ensuring analyte recoveries higher than 85.5% with relative standard deviations (RSD) <10%.The method was applied with good accuracy and precision in the determination of drugs in human urine obtained from patients treated with selected drugs.