Rapid Determination of Levofloxacin in Pharmaceuticals and Biological Fluids Using a New Chemiluminescence System

A novel chemiluminescence method for the determination of levofloxacin is presented, which is based on the inhibitory effect of levofloxacin on the chemiluminescence reaction between luminol and myoglobin in a flow-injection system. The decrement of chemiluminescence intensity is linear with the logarithm of levofloxacin concentration over the range from 0.07 to 100.0 ng/mL (r(2) = 0.9994), with the detection limit of 0.02 ng/mL (3 sigma). At a flow rate of 2.0 mL/min, a complete analytical process could be performed within 0.5 min, including sampling and washing, with a relative standard deviation of less than 3.0% (n = 5). The proposed procedure was applied successfully to the determination of levofloxacin in pharmaceutical preparations, human urine and serum without any pretreatment procedure.