Determination of histamine H2 receptor antagonists in pharmaceutical formulations by CE-MS

Abstract

A simple, fast and new method for the qualitative and quantitative determination of histamine H2 receptor antagonists by using capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) coupled to electrospray ionization (ESI) mass spectrometry (MS) has been developed. The optimized electrolyte for CZE separation includes 32 mM formic acid–ammonium formate buffer solution at pH 4.5. The high selectivity of the proposed method due to the MS detector allows the simultaneous determination of the histamine H2 receptor antagonists cimetidine, ranitidine, roxatidine, famotidine and nizatidine in pharmaceutical formulations and also in biological fluids. The method has been applied for the analysis of seven different pharmaceutical preparations with recoveries obtained between 90.0 and 115.0%.