Determination of cilostazol and its metabolites in human urine by high performance liquid chromatography

A high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method with ultraviolet detection for the simultaneous quantification of cilostazol, and its known metabolites in human urine was developed and validated. Cilostazol, its metabolites and the internal standard OPC-3930 (structural analogue of cilostazol) were extracted from human urine using liquid-liquid extraction with chloroform. The organic extract was then evaporated and the residue was reconstituted in 8% acetonitrile in ammonium acetate buffer (pH 6.5). The reconstituted solution was injected onto an HPLC system and was subjected to reverse-phase HPLC on a 5-microm ODS column. A gradient mobile phase with different percentages of acetonitrile in acetate buffer (pH 6.5) was used for the resolution of analytes. Cilostazol, its metabolites and the internal standard were well resolved at baseline with adequate resolution from constituents of human urine. The lower limit of quantification was 100 ng/ml for cilostazol and all metabolites. The method was validated for a linear range of 100-3000 ng/ml for all the metabolites and cilostazol. The overall accuracy (% relative recovery) of this method ranged from 86.1 to 116.8% for all the analytes with overall precision (%CV) being 0.8-19.7%. The long-term stability of clinical urine samples was established for at least 3 months at -20 degrees C in a storage freezer. During validation, calibration curves had correlation coefficients greater than or equal to 0.995 for cilostazol and the seven tested metabolites. The method was successfully used for the analysis of cilostazol and its metabolites in urine samples from clinical studies, demonstrating the reliability and robustness of the method.