A New HPLC Method with UV Detection for the Determination of Carnosol in Human Plasma and Application to a Pharmacokinetic Study

This article aims to present a simple and sensitive, HPLC-UV method, which was developed to determine carnosol in human plasma samples. Chromatographic separation was achieved with C18 column (150 mm x 4.6 mm x 5 mu m), at 25 degrees C with gradient elution of the mobile phase consisting of methanol-water (2% o-phosphoric acid) at flow rate 1.2 mL/min. The analyte was detected at 230 nm by UV detector. The retention time of carnosol is 3.40 +/- 0.01 min. This currently developed method was validated according to ICH criteria by evaluating the specificity, linearity, precision, accuracy and robustness. The method was determined to be linear in a concentration range of 1-20 ng/mL with the correlation coefficient of 0.9942. The proposed method was applied successfully to the analysis of carnosol in spiked human plasma with good recovery as 96.4% and the precision of the method was determined by intra day and interday assays with the highest RSD % values 5.71. The method successfully applied to a pharmacokinetic study with determination of C-max, t(max), t(1/2) and AUC, by administration of carnosol to a healthy volunteer.