Sensitive determination of deferasirox in blood of patients with thalassemia using dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction based on solidification of floating organic drop followed by HPLC-UV.

Abstract Deferasirox is an oral iron chelator that has been on the market since 2005 and has been a suitable replacement for injectable chelators. It is important to check the amount of this drug in the blood of patients due to side effects. In this study, a new dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction based on solidification of floating drganic drop (DLLME − SFO) was applied to the extraction of deferasirox in the blood of patients with thalassemia prior to its analysis by high-performance liquid chromatography–ultraviolet detection (HPLC − UV). In this method, two long alcohols of the normal chain are mixed in a particular ratio, and then it is injected into the sample solution, which is on the magnetic stirrer. In this case, the mixture of the two alcohol changes to new double-solvent aggregate. This new double-solvent system is used as an extractant, which has a higher extraction power than any of its components alone. Under the optimum conditions, the calibration graph was linear in the rage of 0.2–200 µg L−1 with detection limit of 0.06 µg L−1. Repeatability (intra–day) and reproducibility (inter–day) of method based on seven replicate measurements of 100.0 µg L−1of deferasirox were 3.8% and 5.7%, respectively. The results showed that DLLME − SFO is a very simple, inexpensive, environmental friendly, sensitive and efficient analytical method for the determination of trace amount of drugs in biological samples and suitable results were obtained.