Pretreatment of plasma samples by a novel hollow fiber centrifugal ultrafiltrate device for the determination of cefaclor concentrations in human plasma

A simple sample preparation method was developed by using a centrifugal ultrafiltration (CF-UF) device with hollow fiber (HF) for the determination of cefaclor in plasma by HPLC. Samples were placed into a homemade device, which was consisted of a glass tube and a U-shaped hollow fiber. The filtrate was withdrawn from the hollow fiber into a syringe after centrifugation and 20 μL was directly injected into the HPLC for analysis. The HPLC method had a linear calibration curve in the concentration range of 6.00 × 10−2–30.7 μg mL−1(r = 0.9996). The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) were 0.02 and 0.06 μg mL−1, respectively. The intra and inter-day precisions (RSD) were 1.7%, 1.2%, 1.0% and 3.6%, 2.5%, 1.9%, respectively, for three concentrations. Assay accuracy was higher than 99.2% and the absolute recovery was 86.8–92.5%. It is feasible to use this novel and low cost device for sample pretreatment for the analysis of cefaclor in plasma.