Fluorometric Determination of Acetaminophen and Its Conjugates in Whole Blood

Abstract

A fluorometric procedure has been developed for the determination of acetaminophen and its conjugates, not only in blood plasma and serum, but also in whole blood. This method, in principle, is based on a method reported previously for the determination of acetaminophen in preparations, in which the drug is oxidized with potassium ferricyanide to give a fluorescent substance. The present method has the advantage of being able to determine the drug without hydrolysis to p-aminophenol, in contrast to many of the published methods. The detection limit is about 4μg/ml of acetaminophen in whole blood, which is comparable to that of spectrophotometric assays reported previously.