Liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry for the determination of carbamazepine and its main metabolite in rat plasma utilizing an automated blood sampling system

A liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) method for the simultaneous determination of carbamazepine and its main metabolite carbamazepine 10,11-epoxide in rat plasma is described. The method consists of a liquid-liquid extraction procedure and electrospray LC/MS/MS analysis. The chromatographic separation was achieved within 5 min using a C8 (150 mm × 2.1 mm) 5 μm column with a mobile phase composed of water/acetonitrile/acetic acid (69.5:30:0.5, v/v/v) at a flow rate of 0.4 ml/min. D10-carbamazepine is used as the internal standard for all compounds. Analytes were determined by electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry in the positive ion mode using selected reaction monitoring (SRM). Carbamazepine was monitored by scanning m/z 237 → 194, carbamazepine 10,11-epoxide by m/z 253 → 210 and d10-carbamazepine by m/z 247 → 204. The lower limit of quantitation (LLOQ) is 5 ng/ml for each analyte, based on 0.1 ml aliquots of rat plasma. The extraction recovery of analytes from rat plasma was over 87%. Intra-day and inter-day assay coefficients of variations were in the range of 2.6-9.5 and 4.0-9.6%, respectively. Linearity is observed over the range of 5-2000 ng/ml. This method was used for pharmacokinetic studies of carbamazepine and carbamazepine 10,11-epoxide in response to two different blood sampling techniques (i.e., manual sampling versus automated sampling) in the rat. Several differences between the two sampling techniques suggest that the method of blood collection needs to be considered in the evaluation of pharmacokinetic data.