Solid-phase extraction and analysis of paroxetine in human plasma by ultra performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry

A rapid, sensitive and rugged solid-phase extraction ultra performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method was developed for determination of paroxetine in human plasma. The procedure for sample preparation includes simple SPE extraction procedure coupled with Hypersil Gold C-18 column (100 mm x 2.1 mm, i.d., 1.9 mu m) with isocratic elution at a flow-rate of 0.350 mL/min and fluoxetine was used as the internal standard. The analysis was performed on a triple-quadrupole tandem mass spectrometer by multiple reactions monitoring mode via electrospray ionization. Using 500 mu L plasma, the methods were validated over the concentration range 0.050-16.710 ng/mL for paroxetine, with a lower limit of quantification of 0.050 ng/mL. The intra- and inter-day precision and accuracy of the quality control samples were within 10.0%. The recovery was 69.2 and 74.4% for paroxetine and fluoxetine respectively. Total run time was only 1.9 min. The method was highly reproducible and gave peaks with excellent chromatography properties. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.