Porous molecularly-imprinted polymer for detecting diclofenac in aqueous pharmaceutical compounds

Abstract

Diclofenac (DCF) is one of the most widely used anti-inflammatory drugs worldwide to be ubiquitously present in various environmental compartments. The occurrence and concentration of DCF in water bodies are emerging issues due to its detrimental effects and chronic toxicity in various organisms. In an effort to develop or improve quantitation techniques for DCF in diverse environmental media, the use of porous molecularly imprinted polymers (PMIP) as extractive adsorbents has been drawing great attention in recent years. In this study, PMIP was synthesized as media for solid-phase extraction (SPE) of DCF for analysis by high performance liquid chromatography. The limits of detection and quantification for DCF were in 12-20 and 39-66 pg/mL, respectively, with a linearity over 0.1-100 ng/mL (R-2 > 0.99). This method offered high recovery for aqueous (i.e., 95.41-124.14%) and pharmaceutical compounds (i.e., 93.91-96.48%) with relative standard deviation less than 2%. In addition, the cross-reactivity and sensitivity of this PMIP-SPE-HPLC method when tested against the conventional C18-based SPE method confirmed that it should be highly effective for the quantitation of DCF in aqueous pharmaceutical compounds.