Development of a high-throughput method for the determination of ethosuximide in human plasma by liquid chromatography mass spectrometry.

A simple, rapid, sensitive and specific ultra performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method was developed and validated for the quantification of ethosuximide in human plasma is described. Analyte was chromatographed on a Hypersil Gold C18 column (100 mm x 2.1 mm, i.d., 1.9 microm) with isocratic elution at a flow rate of 0.250 mL/min and pravastatin was used as the internal standard. The assay involves a simple solid-phase extraction procedure of 0.25 mL human plasma and the analysis was performed on a triple-quadrupole tandem mass spectrometer by MRM mode via electrospray ionization (ESI). The method was linear in the concentration range of 0.25-60.0 microg/mL. The lower limit of quantification (LLOQ) was 0.25 microg/mL. The within- and between-day precision and accuracy of the quality control samples were within 10.0%. The recovery was 95.1% and 94.4% for ethosuximide and pravastatin, respectively. The analysis time for each sample was 1.8 min. The method was highly reproducible and gave peaks with excellent chromatography properties. Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.