Quantitative Determination of Medazepam, Diazepam, and Nitrazepam in Whole Blood by Flame-Ionization Gas-Liquid Chromatography

Accurate methods are described for the qualitative and quantitative determination of medazepam, di-azepam, and nitrazepam in 5 ml of whole blood. Medazepam and diazepam are analyzed intact and nitrazepam is chromatographed as its trimethylsilyl derivative by flame-ionization gas-chromatography on “1 % OV-17. ” A supplementary column of “2% OV-1 ” is used to separate nitrazepam TMS from di-azepam when both are present in the same extract. Essential data given include the percentage recovery of medazepam, and the flame-ionization detector re-sponses of diazepam and silylated nitrazepam rela-tive to medazepam, calculated after extraction from blood and gas-chromatographic analysis. Chromato-grams are illustrated of extracts of blood taken from patients on medazepam and diazepam therapy and from a patient who had taken an overdose of nitra-zepam. Additional Keyphrases: toxicology #{149}tranquilizers #{149} monitoring therapy Various methods have been described in the litera-ture for determining the benzodiazepines medazep-am (“Nobrium”), diazepam (“Valium”) and nitra-zepam (“Mogodon”) in whole blood. Diazepam has been determined by ultra-violet spectrophotometry (1) and GLC1 after formation of a benzophenone de-rivative (2). Medazepam and diazepam have been measured by using electron-capture GLC (3). Nitra-zepam has been determined by a colorimetric meth-od (4) and by electron-capture GLC after formatio