Asian Journal
Of Traditional Medicines

Abstract: Curcumin is a phenolic compound derived from the rhizomes of Curcuma longa possessing potential anti-inflammatory and
anticancer properties. Owing to its poor absorption in blood, sample cleanup and enrichment procedures are required for the
analysis of curcumin in plasma. Now, a novel dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction method based on solidification of floating
organic drops coupled with high performance liquid chromatography was developed and validated for the pretreatment and
determination of curcumin in rat plasma. The important variables such as extraction solvent and volume, dispersive solvent
and volume, extraction time, pH, sample volume, and salt concentration, were investigated. Under optimum conditions, 100 μl
rat plasma was precipitated with 200 μl methanol then, after centrifuging, 250 μl supernatant was taken and diluted to 3 ml with
water and adjusted to a pH of 4. Next, 400 μl disperser solvent and 30 μl extraction solvent were rapidly injected into the sample
solution. After vortexing and centrifuging, the sample solution was cooled in an ice bath until the 1-dodecanol was solidified into
a small ball. Then, the solidified 1-dodecanol was removed and thawed quickly at room temperature. 100 μl methanol was added
before the HPLC analysis. The target analyte was determined over a linear range from 0.01 to 2.0 μg/ml in rat plasma and the
limit of detection of the method was 0.003 μg/ml. The enrichment factor and extraction recovery was 20 and 85.6%, respectively.
The proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of curcumin in rat plasma.

Key words: dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction method based on solidification of floating organic drops (DLLME-SFO), highperformance liquid chromatography (HPLC), curcumin, biological sample pretreatment, rat plasma