Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method for the determination of trimetazidine in human plasma

A sensitive liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) method was developed and validated for the determination of trimetazidine (CAS 13171-25-0) in human plasma, using pseudoephedrine as internal standard (IS). Plasma samples were simply pretreated with methanol for deproteinization. The chromatographic separation was performed on a C18 column with a mobile phase of 3 mmol/L ammonium acetate solution-methanol (15:85, v/v) at a flow rate of 0.3 mL/min. The chromatographic separation was achieved in less than 3.2 min. The linearity was established over the concentration range of 1-100 ng/mL. Both intra- and inter-batch standard deviations were less than 9.5%. The method was successfully applied to study the relative bioavailability of trimetazidine hydrochloride tablets in healthy Chinese volunteers and the pharmacokinetic parameters of the reference and test tablets were compared.