Development and validation of a simple and sensitive liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry method for quantifying trimetazidine in human plasma

Summary 1. A simple and sensitive liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS) method for quantifying trimetazidine in human plasma was developed and validated. Sample preparation was based on deproteinating with acetonitrile. 2. Chromatography was performed on a C18 analytical column (5 μm; 150 × 2.1 mm i.d.) and the retention times for trimetazidine and cetirizine (used as the internal standard) were 1.8 and 3.0 min, respectively. The ionization was optimized using an electrospray ionization source and enhanced selectivity was achieved using tandem mass spectrometry. The calibration curve ranged from 0.1 to 200 ng/mL. The inter-day precision, accuracy and the relative standard deviation (RSD) were all < 15%. The analyte was shown to be stable over the time-scale of the entire procedure. 3. The robustness of the method was demonstrated by the good reproducibility of the results obtained during the analysis of clinical samples.