High Pressure Liquid Chromatography Assay for Determination of 18-β-Glycyrrhetinic Acid in Plasma

This report presents a useful high pressure chromatography assay for determination of the proposed chemopreventive agent 18-β-glycerrhetinic acid (GA) in murine and human plasma. Drug was released from plasma proteins through precipitation with a mixture of sodium bisulfate and sodium chloride after which it was extracted with acetonitrile. Standard calibration curves of GA covered the concentration range of 2.5 to 120 μg/ml. The lower limit of detection was 0.5 μg/ml. No endogenous plasma constituents from plasma were found to interfere with the determination of GA. Recover of GA from plasma was greater than 95% over a concentration range of 20 to 100 μg/ml. Linearity of the assay was excellent; within-run precision showed a C.V. of 4.2% at 25 μg/ml, 5.6% at 20 μg/ml and 3.4% at 120 μg/ml. Between-run assay precision and accuracy was also considered to be excellent. The specificity, sensitivity and reproducibility of the procedure are adequate for proposed clinical pharmacology studies of this agent.