Cost-effective capillary electrophoresis with contactless conductivity detection for quality control of beta-lactam antibiotics

A simple and inexpensive approach for determination of various antimicrobial drugs using a purpose-made compact capillary electrophoresis (CE) instrument with capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection (C4D) is reported. The objective of the work is to propose an affordable and easily-implemented tool for quality control and detection of counterfeiting of antibiotic formulations in resource constrained developing countries. The design of the purpose-made CE-C4D system was improved according to the feedback from over 10 years of use of our previous instrument. CE-C4D methods were for the first time developed to analyze β-lactam-based antibiotics commonly used in Vietnam, including single- β-lactam antibiotics (i.e. Cephalexin, Cefotaxime Sodium, Cefixime and Sulbactam) as well as β-lactams co-formulated with Sulbactam (i.e. Amoxicillin, Ampicillin, Cefoperazone and Sulbactam). Single β-lactam antibiotics were analyzed using a background electrolyte (BGE) composed of Tris/Ace (10 mM, pH 7.8) whereas β-lactam – Sulbactam combinations were simultaneously separated using a BGE containing Tris/Ace (10 mM, pH 7.5). The best achieved detection limits were 2.0 mg/L and 1.0 mg/L for these two groups, respectively. Good agreement between results obtained from CE-C4D and standard confirmation methods (LCMS) was achieved, with a coefficient of determination, r2, of 0.9991. The applicability of the developed CE-C4D method was demonstrated for quality control of 24 β-lactam-based antimicrobial drugs available in Vietnam.