High performance liquid chromatography: A versatile tool for assaying antiepileptic drugs in biological matrices

Abstract Epilepsy is a recurrent long-term illness occurring in approximately 1.0 % of the world’s population. There are currently about 29 approved antiepileptic drugs for the management of epilepsy. Due to narrow therapeutic indices of most antiepileptic drugs, clinical pharmacokinetic characteristics and therapeutic drug monitoring of antiepileptic drugs are imperative. High-performance liquid chromatography is one of the several methods in estimating antiepileptic drug levels in biological matrices during pharmacokinetic studies and therapeutic drug monitoring. The objectives of this review were to identify common chromatographic principles, requirements and/or conditions for high-performance liquid chromatography as applied to assay of antiepileptic drugs in biological matrices. The review was conducted using journals in online academic databases from 1990 to 2020 with key words from the subject under consideration. Liquid-liquid extraction and reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with ultraviolet-visible was the most utilized techniques for pharmacokinetic studies and therapeutic drug monitoring of antiepileptic drugs. Notwithstanding, the use of mass spectrometry as a detector for high-performance liquid chromatography is currently on the rise. It is noteworthy, that, the performance metrics of high-performance liquid chromatography are better compared to other assays used in pharmacokinetic studies and therapeutic monitoring of antiepileptic drugs. This review serves as a document to improve existing high-performance liquid chromatographic methods and highlight its utility in the clinical setting.