Comparative Review of Analytical Techniques for Determination of Carbapenems

The carbapenems are a group of beta-lactam antibiotics. The analogs of carbapenem (imipenem, panipenem, meropenem, ertapenem, biapenem and doripenem) used in treatment have an exceptionally broad spectrum of antibacterial activity. Several carbapenems are in advanced clinical trials (tebipenem, lenapenem, sulopenem, tomopenem). The aim of this review is to present the development and applicability of the analytical methods for the determination of carbapenems in biological fluids and pharmaceutical preparations. Carbapenems are easily degraded in aqueous solutions and in solid state. The kind of degradation products of carbapenems depends on several factors (solvents, pH, concentration of drug, temperature). Therefore this paper also provides a comparative review of stability-indicating analytical techniques: spectrophotometry (derivative spectrophotometry, first derivative with or without subtraction technique, first derivative of ratio spectra, biavariate analysis), chromatography (high-performance liquid chromatography - HPLC, coupled TLC-densitometry) and capillaryelectrophoresis (capillary zone electrophoresis - CZE and micellarelectrokinetic capillary chromatography - MEKC) for the determination of carbapenems in the presence of their degradation products.