Simultaneous quantification of batrachotoxin and epibatidine in plasma by ultra-performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry.

An ultra-performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method was developed and validated for the simultaneous quantification of batrachotoxin and epibatidine in plasma. Plasma samples were pretreated by liquid-liquid extraction with acetonitrile and methanol. The toxins were separated on a reversed phase C18-column (2.1mm×50mm, 1.7μm) using a formic acid/acetonitrile gradient elution. Quantification was carried out by mass chromatography with each product ion referenced against midazolam-d4 as an internal standard (IS). The two toxins and the IS were separated within 2min. The calibration curves for the two toxins spiked into human plasma showed good linearities in the range from 2.5 to 250ng/mL. The detection limits were estimated to be 0.5ng/mL for batrachotoxin and 1ng/mL for epibatidine with a signal-to-noise ratio of 3:1. Overall recoveries ranged from 69.6% to 98.2%, and no significant matrix effects were observed. The intra- and interday accuracies were 94.7-102.3%, and the precisions were 1.0-10.3%. This method was successfully applied for the quantification of batrachotoxin and epibatidine in rat plasma samples taken after intraperitoneal administration of the toxins. This is the first report to use UPLC-MS/MS to simultaneously quantify batrachotoxin and epibatidine in plasma samples. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Citation

Yosuke Shiraishi, Tadashi Ogawa, Takayoshi Suzuki, Masae Iwai, Maiko Kusano, Kei Zaitsu, Fumio Kondo, Akira Ishii, Hiroshi Seno. Simultaneous quantification of batrachotoxin and epibatidine in plasma by ultra-performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry. Legal medicine (Tokyo, Japan). 2017 Mar;25:1-5

PMID: 28457503

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