Bioanalytical Methods for the Analysis of Hypoglycemic Drugs and their Main Metabolites

Hypoglycemic drugs are popular for the treatment of Type-2 diabetes. In general, they are administered in oral doses daily and are widely biotransformed in the body. A large number of analytical methods based on chromatographic and electrophoretic techniques for the quantification of hypoglycemic drugs and their metabolites in biological matrices have been described in literature and have been used to support preclinical and clinical studies. In the present review, papers published between 2006 and late 2010 were reviewed with the focus placed on sample preparation procedures and on the separation techniques used. In addition only papers describing validated methods were included. Considering that the achievement of the desired outcome in the control of Type 2-diabetes involves a combination of treatments, bioanalytical methods that simultaneously cover several drugs were also included in this review.