Determination of Moxifloxacin in Human Plasma Using Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography Tandem Quadrupole Mass Spectrometry

OBJECTIVE To construct an ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry method to determine the concentration of moxifloxacin in human plasma. METHODS Precipitation method with acetonitrile was used. An ACQUITY UPLC? BEH C₁₈(100 mm×2.1 mm, 1.7 μm) column was used as the stationary phase at 40 ℃ on Waters XEVO TQD. The mobile phase was consisted of acetonitrile and water (containing 0.1% formic acid) with gradient elution pumped at a flow rate of 0.4 mL·min^-1. Plasmas were precipitated with 200 μL acetonitrile and centrifugated at 13 000 r·min^-1 for 10 min. RESULTS The retention time of moxifloxacin was 1.58 min. Excellent linear calibration curves of moxifloxacin was obtained in the concentration range of 0.1-10 μg·mL^-1(r=0.999 6). The lower limit of quantification of moxifloxacin was 0.01 μg·mL^-1, while the recovery of three concentrations were (96.66±3.8)%, (102.0±1.76)% and (107.2±7.19)%. The intra- and inter- day six standard deviations were all less than 10%. There were no endogenous substances existing in the incubation system which interfered with the determination of the analyses of interest. CONCLUSION The method is simple, accurate and rapid which is suitable for the determination of moxifloxacin and pharmacokinetics study in human.