An UPLC–MS/MS method for the analysis of glimepiride and fluoxetine in human plasma

• First report of the simultaneous determination of glimepiride and fluoxetine.
• Only 2.4 min were needed for an analytical run.
• A relatively larger number of samples can be analyzed in a short time.

A sensitive and rapid ultra performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC–MS/MS) method was developed to determine glimepiride (GPD) and fluoxetine (FLU) in human plasma using diazepam as the internal standard (IS) simultaneously. The presented method used an Acquity UPLC BEH C18 column for chromatographic separation with tandem mass spectrometric detection on a QTrap5500 mass spectrometer operated in positive ESI mode. The mobile phase is a mixture of acetonitrile and 1% formic acid in water with gradient elution at a flow rate of 0.40 mL/min. The GPD, FLU and IS were eluted at 1.46, 1.27 and 1.39 min, respectively. The MRM transitions of m/z 491.3 → 126.3 and m/z 310.5 → 148.1 were used to quantify for GPD and FLU, respectively. The linearity of this method was found to be within the concentration range of 2.5–300 ng/mL and 0.1–20 ng/mL for GPD and FLU in human plasma, respectively. The intra- and inter-day precision (RSD%) were less than 10.3% and accuracy (RE%) was within ±7.3%. The matrix effect were 95.3–100.7% for GPD and FLU. GPD and FLU were sufficiently stable under all relevant analytical conditions. The method was also successfully applied to the clinical samples after a single oral dose of 2 mg GLP and 40 mg FLU in patients.