Spectrophotometric Determination of Mefenamic Acid in Biological Samples Using Magnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles as a Sorbent for Solid Phase Extraction

This work investigates the potential of magnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles as an adsorbent for separation and preconcentration of trace amounts of mefenamic acid in aquatic and biological samples, prior to spectrophotometric determination. The magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (MIONs) were synthesized by mixing of ferrous and ferric chlorides. The possible parameters affecting the enrichment were optimized. It is shown that the novel magnetic nano-adsorbent is quite efficient for fast adsorption of mefenamic acid in pH =7.0. Various parameters affecting the adsorption of mefenamic acid on MIONs, such as pH of solution, desorbing reagent, adsorption isotherms, sample volume, amount of adsorbent and matrix effects, have been investigated. The calibration graph for the determination of mefenamic acid was linear in the range of 1.25-7.25 ng mL−1. The limit of detection, defined as LOD= 3Sb/m was 0.5 ng mL−1 (n=3) of mefenamic acid and the relative standard deviation was 3.6%. The preconcentration factor of 150 was achieved in this method. The proposed procedure has been successfully applied to the determination of mefenamic acid in biological samples such as human plasma and dextrose saline.