Development and validation of a hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometric method for the analysis of paroxetine in human plasma

A sensitive, simple, fast and rugged hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HILIC-MS/MS) method for the determination of paroxetine was developed and validated over curve range 0.050-50 ng/mL using only 0.4 mL plasma. This is the first published LC-MS/MS method and the low limit of quantitation of this method is 10-fold lower than previously published methods. A simple liquid-liquid extraction method using methyl-tert butyl ether (MTBE) as the extraction solvent was used to extract paroxetine and the internal standard (IS) fentanyl-d(5) from plasma. The extract was evaporated to dryness, reconstituted and injected onto a silica column using a low aqueous-high organic mobile phase. The chromatographic run time was 2.0 min per injection, with retention times of 1.1 and 1.2 min for paroxetine and IS, respectively. The detection was by monitoring paroxetine at m/z 330 --> 192 and IS at m/z 342 --> 188, respectively. The inter-day precision and accuracy of the quality control (QC) samples were <5.0% relative standard deviation (RSD) and <2.9% relative error (RE). This method can be used for supporting therapeutical drug monitoring and pharmacokinetic or drug-drug interaction studies.