Determination of nicardipine and amlodipine in human plasma using on-line solid-phase extraction with a monolithic weak cation-exchange column

An on-line solid-phase extraction (SPE)-HPLC method was developed for simultaneous screening of nicardipine and amlodipine in human plasma. A short monolithic poly(glycidyl methacrylate-co-ethylene glycol dimethacrylate) [p(GMA-EDMA)]-based weak cation-exchange (WCX) column was prepared and employed as the selective extraction sorbent, which exhibited good permeability and biocompatibility. During the on-line SPE protocol, high-abundance proteins (human serum albumin, immunoglobulin G, immunoglobulin A and transferrin) and most matrixes in plasma were fast removed while nicardipine and amlodipine were effectively trapped on this monolithic column. Furthermore, the monolithic WCX sorbent could be continuously reused more than 300 times without obvious changes in analytes extraction and proteins cleanup. The proposed method was linear over a range of 0.5–50.0 ng mL−1 for both analytes with a linear regression coefficient greater than 0.998, and the limit of detection (LOD) for each analyte was 0.2 ng mL−1. Validation assays also demonstrated acceptable precision and adequate recovery for simultaneous quantitative screening of nicardipine and amlodipine in human plasma. Real plasma samples from hypertensive patients receiving a dosing of 5 mg antagonists were examined by using the proposed method. Results indicated that the on-line SPE-HPLC method could be applied for simultaneously monitoring of nicardipine and amlodipine in clinical plasma samples.