Air assisted dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction with solidification of the floating organic droplets (AA-DLLME-SFO) and UHPLC-PDA method: Application to antibiotics analysis in human plasma of hospital acquired pneumonia patients

An ultra high-performance liquid chromatographic (UHPLC) method with PDA detection was developed and validated for the simultaneous quantification of metronidazole, meropenem, ciprofloxacin, linezolid and piperacillin in human plasma and applied to patients suffering from hospital acquired pneumonia (HAP). The method uses an air assisted dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction for sample preparation. All parameters in the extraction step, including selection of extractant, amount of extractant, ionic strength, pH, and extraction cycles, were investigated and optimized. Chromatography was carried out using a Poroshell 120 SB C18 (50 × 2.1 mm I.D. 2.6 μm particle size) column and a gradient mobile phase consisting of ammonium acetate buffer (10 mM, pH 4.0) (eluent A); and a mixture of acetonitrile-methanol in a ratio (80/20)(eluent B). Ulifloxacin was used as internal standard. The method demonstrated good linearity with correlation coefficients, r2 > 0.9995 for the drugs, as well as high precision (RSD% ≤ 9.87%), accuracy ranged from −8.14% to +8.98. The enrichment factor (EF) obtained ranged within 87 and 121. During the validation, the concentrations of the analytes were found to be stable after 3 freeze-thaw cycles and for at least 24 h after extraction. Subsequently, this method was used to quantify the drugs in patients with HAP in order to establish if the dosage regimen given was sufficient to eradicate the infection at the target site.