Determination of doxorubicin in pharmaceutical preparation and rat plasma with luminol-K3Fe(CN)6 chemiluminescence system

A novel and rapid flow injection chemiluminescence (FI-CL) method was established for the determination of doxorubicin, which was based on the phenomenon that CL intensity of the reaction between K3Fe(CN)6 and luminol in alkaline solution could be strongly enhanced by doxorubicin. Under optimum conditions, the relative CL intensity of the system was linear with the concentration of doxorubicin in the range from 2.0 × 10−9 g/mL to 5.0 × 10−7 g/mL with a correlation coefficient of 0.9993 (n = 9). The detection limit (3σ) was 4.25 × 10−10 g/mL, and the relative standard deviation (RSD) for 1.0 × 10−7 g/mL doxorubicin (n = 11) was 0.33%. The method was applied to the determination of doxorubicin in pharmaceutical preparation and rat plasma, and the percentage recovery of doxorubicin in rat plasma was between 89.8% and 102.2%. The possible CL mechanism was also discussed briefly.