Assay for screening self medication of common antimalarial drugs using the dried blood spot technique

• The aim of the developed assay is to determine drug use and self medication in areas where achange in treatment policy has taken place. The assay will be a complement to interviewing patients and will increase reliability of the survey. Several of the drugs included in this screening assay have long half-lifes e.g. chloroquine, sulfadoxine, mefloquine, andlumefantrine and are detectable at least 7 days after administration. The sample collection is very simple, using 100 μl capillary whole blood applied onto Whatman 31 ET Chr filter paper.The drugs are extracted from the dried blood spot with two different extraction methods (due to the big differences in physico-chemical properties). Solid phase extraction is used as sample clean-up and separation is performed with gradient-LC with MS ion-trap detection. Detection limits (S/N > 5:1) at 50 ng/ml or better were achieved for all drugs except lumefantrine (200 ng/ml)

Nyckelord

Chloroquine

Quinine

Sulfadoxine

Pyrimethamine

Mefloquine

Lumefantrine

Sampling paper

Dried blood spots

Capillary blood

Antimalarial drugs

Solid-phase extraction

Liquid chromatography

Publikations- och innehållstyp

pop (ämneskategori)

ovr (ämneskategori)