Determination of dehydroandrographolide succinate in human plasma by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS): Method development, validation and clinical pharmacokinetic study

A LC–MS/MS method was developed and validated for the determination of dehydroandrographolide succinate (DAS), a traditional Chinese medicine derivative used for the treatment of pneumonia, upper respiratory tract infection, and chronic bronchitis. Following protein precipitation, DAS was detected by ion transition at m/z 531.2/99.0 in multiple reaction monitoring mode with negative electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry. The limit of detection was 0.5 ng/mL, and the lower limit of quantification was 10 ng/mL in human plasma. Good linearity was maintained over the range of 10–5000 ng/mL, and the correlation coefficient was better than 0.99. The accuracy ranged from 95.3% to 113%, RSD from 0.928% to 6.47%, for the within- and between-run analysis at all QC levels. The recovery ranged from 85.5% to 93.4% and the matrix effect from 107% to 119%. No significant carryover and good stability were found during method validation. The developed method was successfully applied to the determination of DAS in human plasma in a pharmacokinetic study following intravenous infusion of potassium sodium DAS to nine healthy volunteers.