Simultaneous determination and quantitation of hypolipidemic drugs in fingerprints by UPLC-Q-TRAP/MS

An ultra-performance liquid chromatography tandem triple quadrupole compound linear ion trap mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TRAP/MS) method was developed and validated for the detection of hypolipidemic drugs in fingerprints. 13 hypolipidemic drugs were well separated by the gradient elution of 0.01% formic acid in water and methanol at a flow rate of 0.4 mL/min within 11 min. The analytes were detected in positive (ESI + ) and negative (ESI - ) modes and scanned using scheduled multiple reaction monitoring-information dependent acquisition-enhanced product ion (SMRM-IDA-EPI) for best selectivity and sensitivity. The calibration curves showed good linearity in the range of 0.050–50.000 ng/patch with coefficients ( r 2 ) higher than 0.9904 for all analytes. Meantime, the LODs and LLOQs were in ranges of 0.001–0.034 and 0.003–0.050 ng/patch. The accuracies, intra-day and inter-day precision ranged from −13.3 to 0.3%, 1.1–10.4% and 3.7–14.5%, respectively. The recoveries ranged from 79.9 to 114.8%, while the absolute and relative matrix effects were in the range of 83.0–107.2% and 2.2–9.7%. By comparing the non-spiked fingerprints from healthy volunteers with the fingerprints obtained from patients, demonstrated that the method was competent for determination and quantitation of hypolipidemic drugs in fingerprints.