Determination of Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs in Human Urine Sample using HPLC/UV and Three Phase Hollow Fiber-Liquid Phase Microextraction (HF-LPME)

Three phase hollow fiber-liquid phase microextraction (HF-LPME), which is faster, simpler and uses a more environmentally friendly sample-preparation technique, was developed for the analysis of Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) in human urine. For the effective simultaneous extraction/concentration of NSAIDs by three phase HF-LPME, parameters (such as extraction organic solvent, pH of donor/acceptor phase, stirring speed, salting-out effect, sample temperature, and extraction time) which influence the extraction efficiency were optimized. NSAIDs were extracted and concentrated from 4 mL of aqueous solution at pH 3 (donor phase) into dihexyl ether immobilized in the wall pores of a porous hollow fiber, and then extracted into the acceptor phase at pH 13 located in the lumen of the hollow fiber. After the extraction, 5 ${\mu}L$ of the acceptor phase was directly injected into the HPLC/UV system. Simultaneous chromatographic separation of seven NSAIDs was achieved on an Eclipse XDB-C18 (4.6 mm i.d. ${\times}$ 150 mm length, 5 ${\mu}m$ particle size) column using isocratic elution with 0.1% formic acid and methanol (30:70) at a HPLC-UV/Vis system. Under optimized conditions (extraction solvent, dihexyl ether; $pH_{donor}$, 3; $pH_{acceptor}$, 13; stirring speed, 1500 rpm; NaCl salt, 10%; sample temperature, $60^{\circ}C$; and extraction time, 45 min), enrichment factors (EF) were between 59 and 260. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) in the spiked urine matrix were in the concentration range of 5-15 ng/mL and 15-45 ng/mL, respectively. The relative recovery and precision obtained were between 58 and 136% and below 15.7% RSD, respectively. The calibration curve was linear within the range of 0.015-0.96 ng/mL with the square of the correlation coefficient being more than 0.997. The established method can be used to analyse of NSAIDs of low concentration (ng/mL) in urine.