Journal of pharmaceutical and biomedical analysis
-
J Pharm Biomed Anal · Jan 2015
Tramadol chronic abuse: an evidence from hair analysis by LC tandem MS.
Hair analysis, as complementary matrix, has expanded across the spectrum of toxicological investigations for misuse drug monitoring. Hair has become an important matrix for drug analysis, owing to the possibility to detect target analytes for long time periods, depending on hair length. A liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method has been developed for the quantitation of tramadol, a widely used centrally acting analgesic, and its main metabolites in hair (ODMT, NDMT, NOT). ⋯ The proposed procedure was successfully applied to quantify tramadol and metabolites in real hair samples submitted to our laboratory: three cases of tramadol assumption within the therapeutic dosage (3 × 2 segments) and one case of tramadol abuse in a binge pattern (8 segments). The ranges found for TRAM, ODMT, NDMT and NOT were markedly higher in the abuse case (63.42-107.30, 3.76-6.26, 24.88-45.66, 0.22-1.18 ng/mg hair, respectively) compared to the other case reports (3.29-20.12, 0.28-1.87, 0.45-4.32, 0.07-0.80 ng/mg, respectively); also the values of NMDT/ODMT ratio differed significantly. According to the obtained data, we hypothesized that the binge pattern may influence the metabolites' to parent drug concentration ratios; therefore this parameter could represent a target assessment tool to monitor abuse cases.
-
Clodronate belongs to the class of bisphosphonates which are used for the treatment of bone disorders. Due to its high polarity it has a low and highly variable oral bioavailability which results in low plasma concentrations and requires sensitive bioanalytical methods to characterize its pharmacokinetics in human. Here, we describe for the first time the development and validation of a LC-MS/MS assay for the quantification of clodronate in human plasma. ⋯ Clodronate can also undergo up to three freeze-thaw cycles without impaired stability. Thus, the method was shown to possess sufficient specificity, sensitivity, accuracy, precision and stability to measure plasma concentrations of clodronate. Finally, the developed method was successfully applied to study the clodronate serum levels in a pharmacokinetic study in healthy volunteers.
-
J Pharm Biomed Anal · Nov 2014
A validated HPLC-ESI-MS/MS method for quantification of 2-hydroxy-4-methoxy benzoic acid from rat plasma and its application to pharmacokinetic study using sparse sampling methodology.
The phenolic compound, 2-hydroxy-4-methoxy benzoic acid (HMBA), is one of the major phytoconstituents of Decalepis arayalpathra (Joseph & Chandra.) Venter, a rare and endemic medicinal plant found in the Western Ghats of India. HMBA has been attributed to possess several biological effects including anti-inflammatory, anti-pyretic, anti-oxidant and anti-diabetic. The present article describes a rapid and sensitive liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometric method (HPLC-MS/MS) for the determination of HMBA in rat plasma. ⋯ Further, the validated HPLC-MS/MS method was successfully applied to pharmacokinetic study of HMBA after oral administration of D. arayalpathra tuber extracts to female albino Wistar rats using sparse sampling methodology. Following oral administration, the maximum mean concentration in rat plasma (Cmax -1301.57±128.22ng/mL) was achieved at 1.5h (Tmax) and the area under the curve (AUC0-48h) was 8985.02±229.54ngh/mL. The elimination half-life (t1/2) and terminal elimination rate constant (Kel) were 2.48h and 0.28 L/h, respectively.
-
J Pharm Biomed Anal · Jul 2014
Differentiating Puerariae Lobatae Radix and Puerariae Thomsonii Radix using HPTLC coupled with multivariate classification analyses.
Puerariae Lobatae Radix (PLR), the root of Pueraria lobata, is a traditional Chinese medicine for treating diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Puerariae Thomsonii Radix (PTR), the root of Pueraria thomsonii, is a closely related species to PLR and has been used as a PLR substitute in clinical practice. The aim of this study was to compare the classification accuracy of high performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) with that of ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) in differentiating PLR from PTR. ⋯ The results demonstrated that the HPTLC classification models were comparable to the UPLC classification models. In particular, k-nearest neighbours, partial least square-discriminant analysis, principal component analysis-discriminant analysis and support vector machine-discriminant analysis showed the highest rate of correct species classification, whilst the lowest classification rate was obtained from soft independent modelling of class analogy. In conclusion, HPTLC combined with multivariate analysis is a promising technique for the quality control and differentiation of PLR and PTR.
-
J Pharm Biomed Anal · Jan 2014
Improvement of a stability-indicating method by Quality-by-Design versus Quality-by-Testing: a case of a learning process.
The understanding of the method is a major concern when developing a stability-indicating method and even more so when dealing with impurity assays from complex matrices. In the presented case study, a Quality-by-Design approach was applied in order to optimize a routinely used method. An analytical issue occurring at the last stage of a long-term stability study involving unexpected impurities perturbing the monitoring of characterized impurities needed to be resolved. ⋯ The selected working condition was then fully validated using accuracy profiles based on statistical tolerance intervals in order to evaluate the reliability of the results generated by this LC/ESI-MS stability-indicating method. A comparison was made between the traditional Quality-by-Testing (QbT) approach and the QbD strategy, highlighting the benefit of this QbD strategy in the case of an unexpected impurities issue. On this basis, the advantages of a systematic use of the QbD methodology were discussed.