Abstract:
OBJECTIVE To establish LC-MS/MS methods for the determination of concentration of ezetimibe(EZE) and total ezetimibe(EZE-T) in human plasma and to use for a bioequivalence(BE) study of ezetimibe tablet formulations.
METHODS Plasma samples were pre-treated by direct precipitation and post-enzyme precipitation for quantification of EZE and EZE-T, respectively. Ezetimibe-d4(EZE-d4) was used as the internal standard(IS). The analyte was retained and eluted using a Waters ACQUITY UPLC
® BEH C
18 column(2.1 mm×50 mm, 1.7 μm), with a binary mobile phase system consisting of 0.1% acetic acid-acetonitrile(A) and 0.1% acetic acid-water(B) at a flow rate of 0.2 mL·min
-1. EZE and EZE-d4 were detected in an ESI source under negative ion mode, used the ion transitions of
m/
z 408.2→271.0 and
m/
z 412.2→271.1 for EZE and EZE-d4, respectively. The quantitation method was applied to analyze the blood drug concentration of healthy subjects after oral administration of the same dose of test or reference preparation ezetimibe tablets.
RESULTS Endogenous substances in plasma did not interfere with the quantitative determination of the analyte, and EZE, EZE-T, EZE-d4 had no mutual interference and/or mutual transformation. The quantitative ranges of EZE and EZE-T in human plasma were 0.1-20 and 1-200 ng·mL
-1, respectively, with good linearity. The recoveries of the analytes and IS were recorded between 102.4% and 109.8%. The IS-normalized matrix effect factors were recorded between 98.5% and 99.4% with coefficient of variation(CV) <5%. Intra- and inter-batch accuracy and precision were <15% with CV<10%. The plasma concentrations of EZE and EZE-T determined by the method and the pharmacokinetic parameters calculated there after in the BE study were in accordance with those found in previous reports. The deviation between the re-measured value of incurred sample reanalysis and the original measured value was <10%.
CONCLUSION The method is specific, sensitive, accurate, reproducible requiring small sample volumes, and comfortably meets the requirements of ezetimibe BE studies.