ANALYSIS OF PREGABALIN
What is Pregabalin?
“Pregabalin is used to treat epilepsy and anxiety, it is also taken to treat nerve pain that can be caused by different illnesses including diabetes, shingles, or injury.
Pregabalin works in different ways:
1) in epilepsy it stops seizures by reducing the abnormal electrical activity in the brain
2) with nerve pain it blocks pain by interfering with pain messages travelling through the nervous system, through the brain and down the spine
3) in anxiety it stops your brain from releasing the chemicals that make you feel anxious
Like most medicines it comes with side effects even when following your prescribed amount, in rare cases it can lead to hallucinations, difficulty breathing and thoughts of self-harming”(1)
Our Method
We were asked to look for Pregabalin in canine plasma as part of research into treatment of dogs with epilepsy.
The Lower Limit of Quantitation (LLOQ) and Upper Limit of Quantitation (ULOQ) were established for the method as 1ng/ml and 1000ng/ml respectively, and the Limit of Detection was calculated as 0.014891ng/ml in canine plasma.
The system linearity was determined by the evaluation of Pregabalin standard curves analysed on 3 separate days. The curves were fitted using linear regression with 1/C2 weighting. Each standard curve consisted of 11 standards ranging from 0ng/ml to 1000ng/ml.
We were able to measure levels of pregabalin over the treatment period and hence show the level rise then fall over the 12 hour period.
References
(1) Pregabalin: medicine to treat epilepsy and anxiety [Internet]. nhs.uk. 2020 [cited 22 December 2020]. Available from: https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/pregabalin/
