A LC-MS analysis of acamprosate from human plasma: pharmacokinetic application

A rapid and highly sensitive method for the determination of acamprosate (ACM), in human plasma using ESI‐LC‐MS/MS (electrospray ionization liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry) in negative ionization polarity in multiple reactions monitoring (MRM) mode was developed and validated. The procedure involves a simple protein precipitation step. Chromatographic separation was carried out on a Hypersil BDS C18 column (150 mm × 4.6 mm, 5 µm) with an isocratic mobile phase and a total run time of 2.5 min. The standard calibration curves were linear within the range of 7.04–702.20 ng/mL for ACM (r ≥ 0.990). This study briefly describes the role of ion source design on matrix effects. ACM shows matrix effects in z‐spray ionization source design, whereas it has no matrix effects in orthogonal spray ion source design. This method was successfully applied to a pharmacokinetic study after oral administration of acamprosate 333 mg tablet in Indian healthy male volunteers. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Acamprosate was estimated from human plasma by ESI‐LC‐MS/MS. This is the most sensitive method with very short analysis time. The linearity range of acamprosate is 7.04–702.20 ng/mL. Total analysis time is 2.5 minutes only. It shows remarkable matrix effects in Z‐spray ion source design, but almost no matrix effects in orthogonal spray ion source design.