Determination of pamidronate in human whole blood and urine by reversed-phase HPLC with fluorescence detection

Pamidronate is a bisphosphonate that is effective in treating bone disease including osteopenia and osteoporosis in adults. A sensitive and reliable method for the analysis of pamidronate in whole blood and urine is key to the development of this drug for use in children. A previously described method for pamidronate analysis serum and urine did not consistently detect the drug at satisfactory levels in whole blood. The procedure involves co-precipitation of the bisphosphonates with calcium phosphate, pre-column derivitization with fluorescamine, HPLC utilizing a Nucleosil C₁₈ column, and fluorescence detection with excitation at 395 nm and emission at 480 nm. Changes to the original protocol included the use of a new internal standard (alendronate), the optimization of the concentration of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) for dissolving the precipitate, and the elimination of the acidification step prior to deproteinization. The optimum EDTA concentration, which had a significant effect on the labeling capability of fluorescamine, was determined to be 20 mM. A good separation between pamidronate and alendronate was achieved using a heated (40°C ) Nucleosil C₁₈, 10 μm particle size column. The mobile phase was an aqueous solution of 1 mM Na₂EDTA-methanol (97:3, v/v) adjusted to pH 6.5 using a flow-rate of 1 mL/min. Fluorescence detection was set at 395 nm for excitation and at 480 nm for emission. The limit of quantitation for pamidronate was 0.5 μg/mL in whole blood and 0.1 μg/mL in urine. The method was applied to both whole blood and urine samples from pediatric patients.