Pharmacokinetic detection of penicillin excreted in urine using a totally internally reflected resonance light scattering technique with cetyltrimethylammonium bromide.

A quantitative analysis method for penicillins including ampicillin (AmP), benzyl penicillin (BP), oxacillin (OA) and amoxycillin (AmO) is proposed that makes use of the totally internally reflected resonance light scattering (TIR-RLS) signal from the penicillin at the H2O/CCl4 interface in the presence of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTMAB), and enables the pharmacokinetics of penicillin taken orally and excreted through urine to be monitored. Penicillin is coadsorbed with CTMAB at the H2O/CCl4 interface in neutral solution, resulting in the formation of ion associates that display greatly enhanced TIR-RLS signals (maximum at 368-372 nm). This enhanced TIR-RLS intensity was found to be proportional to the penicillin concentration over the range 0.2 x 10(-6) to 2.2 x 10(-6) mol L(-1), with limits of determination (3sigma) of 5.0 x 10(-8) to 7.0 x 10(-8) mol L(-1). Pharmacokinetics studies performed using the present method show that the excretion of orally-taken ampicillin through urine has a half-time of 1.05 h and an excremental quantum over 8 h of 49.3%, respectively.