Relevance of a combined UV and single mass spectrometry detection for the determination of tenofovir in human plasma by HPLC in therapeutic drug monitoring

A sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography method coupled to UV and single mass spectrometry (MS) detection was developed for the determination of tenofovir in human plasma. A solid phase extraction procedure (Bond-Elut® C18 Varian cartridges) provided high extraction efficiency (91% for tenofovir and 68.8% for the internal standard, 3-methylcytidine). An atlantis®-dC-18 analytical column is used with an isocratic mode elution of a mixture (pH 2.5) of ammonium acetate/methanol (98.5:1.5, v/v). Detection was performed at 260 nm and by using the ion at m/z 288. The signals from both detectors were validated over the range of 10–1000 ng mL−1 and were found to be linear, accurate and precise. At the lowest limit of quantification, 10 ng mL−1 for UV and 5 ng mL−1 for MS, the average coefficient of variation was 6.9 and 3.9%, respectively. To investigate the potential of the validated method for clinical studies, more than 170 samples from HIV-infected adult patients were then analyzed with this assay. A good correlation was observed between the results obtained with both detectors. However, in several cases discordant results were observed between UV and MS detections. Therefore, tenofovir can sometimes suffer from interferences using either UV or single MS detection. We concluded that the double detection allows to obtain a more specific quantification of tenofovir. The present assay is sound and can be used for therapeutic drug monitoring allowing a higher reliability of the results which are transmitted to the medical team.