Clinical Chemistry, Vol 40, 745-748, Copyright © 1994 by American Association for Clinical Chemistry

Measurement of felbamate by wide-bore capillary gas chromatography and flame ionization detection

N Rifai, D Fuller, T Law and M Mikati
Department of Laboratory Medicine, Children's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115.

Felbamate, a newly developed antiepileptic agent, has been demonstrated to control partial and generalized seizures effectively. We have developed a gas-chromatographic method for the determination of felbamate, using a wide-bore capillary column, a flame ionization detector, and a simple extraction procedure. The assay day-to-day precision (n = 20) was 5.2% and 3.6% for drug concentrations of 50 and 150 mg/L, respectively; average recovery over a wide range of felbamate concentrations was 95%; the detection limit was 5 mg/L; and assay linearity extended to 300 mg/L. Although 9 of the 27 drugs tested were coextracted with felbamate, they exhibited significantly different retention times and showed no interference. A short-term stability study showed that plasma felbamate is stable at 4, -20, or -78 degrees C for at least 1 month. Plasma felbamate concentrations in 66 pediatric patients ranged from 7 to 154 mg/L (mean +/- SD 44 +/- 24.7). We consider the method ideally suited for therapeutic monitoring of plasma felbamate concentration.