Sensitive liquid chromatography positive electrospray tandem mass spectrometry method for the quantitation of tegaserod in human plasma using liquid-liquid extraction.

A sensitive and rapid high-performance liquid chromatography-positive ion electrospray tandem mass spectrometry method is developed and validated for the quantitation of tegaserod in human plasma. Following liquid-liquid extraction, the analytes are separated using an isocratic mobile phase on a reversed-phase column and analyzed by tandem mass spectrometry in the multiple reaction monitoring mode using the respective (M+H)+ ions, m/z 302 to 173 for tegaserod and m/z 409 to 228 for the internal standard. The assay exhibits a linear dynamic range of 100-10000 pg/mL for tegaserod in human plasma. The lower limit of quantitation is 100 pg/mL with a relative standard deviation of less than 7%. Acceptable precision and accuracy are obtained for concentrations over the standard curve range. A run time of 2.0 min for each sample makes it possible to analyze more than 250 human plasma samples per day. The validated method is successfully used to analyze human plasma samples for application in pharmacokinetic, bioavailability, or bioequivalence studies.