Determination of Hydroxychloroquine Concentration in Human Plasma by LC-MS/MS Method

Introduction

This study provides a method for quantitative analysis of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in human plasma using Shimadzu ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS; NexeraTM with LCMSTM-8050). The concentration of HCQ in human plasma can be accurately determined within 10 min after simple protein precipitation using acetonitrile. The method is evaluated in terms of specificity, linearity, limit of quantification (LOQ), repeatability and matrix effects. The results show that good linearity was obtained in a range from 0.5 ng/mL to 500 ng/mL with a correlation coefficient greater than 0.998. The LOQ was 0.5 ng/mL. The intra-day precision for low, medium and high concentrations was between 1.57% to 8.33% and the accuracy ranged from 97.91% to 106.02%. The matrix effects for low, medium and high concentrations of HCQ as well as the internal standard ranged from 98.31% to 108.17%. Shimadzu LCMS-8050 can be easily and quickly used for development and validation of critical drug candidates such has HCQ.

June 9, 2020 GMT