Trace determination of antifungal drugs in biological fluids through a developed approach of hydrogel-based spin-column micro-solid-phase extraction followed by LC-MS/MS analysis

In the present research, a blended polyacrylamide-chitosan hydrogel was synthesized. For the first time, the prepared sorbent was efficiently employed in a hydrogel-based spin-column setup as a promising format. The proposed method was applied for monitoring the trace amounts of ketoconazole, clotrimazole, and miconazole in blood samples. Effective adsorption and desorption parameters were optimized using a central composite design and the one-variable-at-a-time method. Under the optimal conditions, the calibration curves were linear in the range of 15.0-1000.0, 1.0-1000.0, and 2.0-1000.0 ng mL^-1 for ketoconazole, clotrimazole, and miconazole, respectively, along with intra- and interday precision less than 8.4%. Limits of detection were obtained between 0.2 and 5.0 ng mL^-1 . The preconcentration factors were found in the range of 5.9-7.8. The introduced method was successfully applied for micro-solid-phase extraction of trace amounts of target antifungal drugs in blood samples, followed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Satisfactory relative recoveries of 94.5-103.5% were obtained, implying method reliability. Overall, the proposed method provides good accuracy and repeatability, high reusability, and good applicability to determine antifungal drugs in complex biological matrices.