Clean-up, detection and determination of salbutamol in human urine and serum.

Salbutamol ¿2-(tert-butylamino)-1-[4-hydroxy-3- (hydroxymethyl)phenyl]ethanol¿, also known as albuterol, is clinically the most widely used beta 2-adrenoceptor agonist in the treatment of bronchial asthma. During this study, we evaluated liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) and solid-phase extraction (SPE) in order to develop a reliable extraction method followed by analysis using liquid chromatography and gas chromatography. An assay is described which involves SPE as the clean-up method followed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to determine salbutamol levels in human serum after oral administration. The SPE method requires the use of a hyper-cross-linked styrene-divinylbenzene bonded phase (ENV+) without involving any sample pre-treatment to obtain 60-65% recoveries for salbutamol and terbutaline as the internal standard. Distilled water and 1% trifluoroacetic acid in methanol were found to be the most suitable washing solvent and eluting solvent, respectively. A detection limit of 2 ng mL-1 was achieved by derivatization with N-methyl-N-trimethylsilyltrifluoroacetamide to form trimethylsilyl (TMS)-salbutamol (m/z 369) and TMS-terbutaline (m/z 356). The relationship between the ratio of the peak area of salbutamol to that of the internal standard and concentration was linear for the range tested (2-200 ng mL-1) and the correlation of coefficient was 0.9999 with a y-intercept not significantly different from zero. The inter-day relative standard deviation (RSD) was < 10% for all three concentrations. The intra-day RSD was 14% for 2 ng mL-1. This assay was then successfully applied to human serum samples obtained from clinical trials after oral administration of salbutamol.

Development of a health information service using a videotex system.

A number of health databases is now available in Malaysia, but few are accessible to the general public. However, recently a service was launched nationwide via a videotex system to also target the Malaysia public. This service is provided by the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in collaboration with several Malaysian Government ministries and agencies. Access to health information via videotex, be it medical, pharmaceutical or environmental is viewed as an effective means of on-line information dissemination. It provides not only rapid retrieval but is also economical and interactive, particularly suitable for a developing country.