Simultaneous determination of reserpine,rescinnamine,and yohimbine in human plasma by ultraperformance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry

A sensitive and selective uplc-ms/ms method was developed and validated for the determination of three indolic alkaloids (reserpine,rescinnamine,and yohimbine) in human plasma using papaverine as internal standard (is). after a one step protein precipitation with acetonitrile,separation was carried out using c18 column (50 × 2.1 mm,i.d. 1.7 m) and mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile: water: formic acid (60: 40: 0.1%,v/v/v) pumped at a flow rate of 0.2 ml/min. the mass spectrometric determination was carried out using an electrospray interface operated in the positive mode with multiple reaction monitoring (mrm) mode. the precursor to product ion transitions of m/z 609.32 > 195.01,m/z 635.34 > 221.03,m/z 355.19 > 144,and m/z 340.15 > 202.02 were selected for the quantification of reserpine,rescinnamine,yohimbine,and is,respectively. the analytical response was found to be linear in the range of 0.36-400,0.27-300,and 0.23-250 ng/ml with lower limit of quantification of 0.36,0.27,and 0.23 ng/ml for reserpine,rescinnamine,and yohimbine,respectively. validation was made following official guidelines. the proposed method enabled reproducible results and hence could be reliable for pharmacokinetic and toxicological analysis. © 2013 muzaffar iqbal et al.