Low-volume LC-MS/MS method for the pharmacokinetic investigation of carvedilol, enalapril and their metabolites in whole blood and plasma: Application to a paediatric clinical trial

Evidence-based pharmacotherapy with carvedilol and enalapril in children suffering from heart failure is insufficient owing to limited pharmacokinetic data. Although a few data sets regarding enalapril, its metabolite enalaprilat and carvedilol in children have been published, pharmacokinetic data on carvedilol metabolites are missing. However, for both drug substances, their active metabolites contribute substantially to drug efficacy. As data can hardly be derived from adults owing to the unknown impacts of enzymatic maturation and ontogeny during childhood, customised assays are important to facilitate paediatric evidence-based pharmacotherapy. Considering ethical paediatric constraints, a low-volume liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) assay was developed using whole blood or plasma for the quantification of enalapril, enalaprilat, carvedilol, O-desmethyl carvedilol, 4- and 5-hydroxyphenyl carvedilol as well as 3- and 8-hydroxy carvedilol. To facilitate broader applications in adults, the elderly and children, a wide calibration range-between 0.024/0.049 and 50.000 ng/ml-was achieved with good linearity (r ≥ 0.995 for all analytes). In compliance with international bioanalytical guidelines, accuracy, precision, sensitivity and internal standard normalised matrix effects were further successfully validated with the exception of those for 3-hydroxy carvedilol, which was therefore assessed semi-quantitatively. Distinct haematocrits did not impact matrix effects or recoveries when analysing whole blood. Blood-to-plasma ratios were determined for all analytes to form the basis for pharmacokinetic modelling. Finally, incurred sample reanalysis of paediatric samples confirmed the reproducibility of the developed low-volume LC-MS/MS method during study sample analysis. The assay facilitates the reliable generation of important data and contributes towards a safe drug therapy in children.

Ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-MS/MS (UHPLC-MS/MS) in practice: analysis of drugs and pharmaceutical formulations

Background

UHPLC-MS/MS is connected in various research facilities for the qualitative and quantitative investigation of a pharmaceutical substance, pharmaceutical items, and biological specimen.

Main body

The commence review article is an endeavor to offer pervasive awareness around assorted aspects and details about the UHPLC-MS/MS and related techniques with the aim on practice to an estimation of medicinal active agents in the last 10 years. The article also focused on isolation, separation, and characterization of present impurity in drug and biological samples.

Conclusion

Review article compiles a general overview of medicinally important drugs and their analysis with UHPLC-MS/MS. It gives fundamental thought regarding applications of UHPLC-MS/MS for the study on safety limit. The summary of developed UHPLC-MS/MS methods gives a contribution to the future trend and limitations in this area of research.

Spectrofluorimetric Determination of Atenolol and Carvedilol in Pharmaceutical Preparations after Optimization of Parameters using Response Surface Methodology

Background: The present work is aimed to study the effect of different parameters on the fluorescence intensity of atenolol (ATE) and carvedilol (CAR) and optimization by response surface methodology (RSM) to provide a simple analytical method for their quantification in pharmaceutical formulations. Methods: Various parameters affecting the fluorescence intensity, i.e., sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) concentration, pH, volume fraction of solvents were optimized using RSM. Then, the optimized parameters were applied to the validation of a method for fluorimetric determination of β-blockers in their pharmaceutical preparations. Results: It is obtained that under the optimum conditions for determination of ATE, the method provided a linear range between 130 to 750 ng/mL with a coefficient of correlation (r) of 0.9996. Also, the limit of detection and limit of quantification (LOD and LOQ) were 40 ng/mL and 130 ng/mL, respectively. Moreover, it is observed that, the linearity of method for determination of CAR was between 0.37 to 4.0 ng/mL and LOD and LOQ of method were 0.11 ng/mL and 0.37 ng/mL, respectively. Conclusion: An accurate, sensitive and reliable spectrofluorimetric method was developed anf successfully used to determine the (ATE) and carvedilol (CAR) in their pharmaceutical preparations.