Determination of sertraline in human plasma by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry

Abstract

A method for the determination of sertraline in human plasma using reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospary ionization mass spectrometry (LC-ESI/MS) , with the selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode, was described. In this work, imipramine was set as an internal standard. Analytes were extracted from plasma samples that previously were alkalified with pH 10.00 Na2CO3 solution into a methyl tert-butyl ether phase. Supernatant was dried with gas and the residue was dissolved using mobile phase prior to analyzing. Optimized conditions involved separation on am RP-Extend-C18 column (150 mm ×4.6 mm, 5 μm) , keeping at 40°C using washing solution composed of 60% methanol and 40% distilled water (pH 3.00, adjusted with trifluoroacetic acid) at 0.6 mL/min. The analysis was performed in the selected ion monitoring mode at m/z 159 for sertraline and m/z 281 for Imipramine. The retention time of sertraline and Imipramine was observed at 5.4 min and 3. 8 min, respectively. The linear response for sertraline was obtained in the range of 1-80 μg/L with a correlation coefficient of 0. 9999. The limit of quantification, using 500 μX of plasma, was 1 μg/L (S/N > 10). Precision of either intra-day or inter-day assay were less than 6.0% and relative recovery ranged from 90% to 106%. The exaction recovery was between 75% and 93%. These findings indicate that the assay method has adequate precision and accuracy to determine the amount of Sertraline in human plasma so that it is quite suitable for the analysis of samples collected during pharmacokinetics investigations in humans.