Determination of apparent binding constants of drugs by capillary electrophoresis using β-cyclodextrin as ligand and three different linear plotting methods

Capillary electrophoretic estimation of apparent binding constants (Kapp) for naproxen, salbutamol, indomethacine and procaine with β-cyclodextrin is presented. While with naproxen and indomethacine this approach was straightforward and gave well compatible results by three different linearization plots (double reciprocal, x reciprocal and y reciprocal), with salbutamol a higher value than reported for the electromigration estimation of this magnitude was obtained (a fourfold increase). This difference is ascribed to the fact that the measurements were done in the acid region (while the reported values were obtained at higher pH values). As a matter of fact the values of Kapp reported in this communication for salbutamol comply better with the value of Kapp (69.3) obtained by the solubility method.