Measuring triamcinolone acetonide in aqueous humor by gas chromatography-electron-capture negative-ion mass spectrometry

Intravitreal triamcinolone acetonide (IVTA) injection has been used in the treatment of various posterior segment diseases. One of the side effects of IVTA is raised intraocular pressure, which may be secondary to triamcinolone acetonide (TAA)'s effects on the trabecular meshwork that affects aqueous outflow. In order to study the biological effects of TAA on the trabecular meshwork, we firstly need to reliably and accurately detect the concentration of TAA in tissue cells or fluids. In this study we have described a technique of using gas chromatography-electron-capture-negative-ion mass spectrometry (GC–NCI–MS) to develop a simple, sensitive, selective and validated method to detect TAA in aqueous humor (AH) of rabbits following IVTA and subconjunctival TAA injections. We derivatized TAA from extracted aqueous sample by acetic anhydride and BSTFA, respectively, and analyzed by GC–NCI–MS. The detection limit was 0.3 ng/ml, linearity over 0.995 from 0 to 300 ng/ml. The reproducibility ranged from 10.4 to 3.9 for concentrations from 3 to 300 ng/ml, and recovery was over 95% for the concentrations 10, 60, and 200 ng/ml. No interference was found from 159 aqueous samples. There was no TAA residue carried to the next injection from previously high concentration injection, 10,000 ng/ml. We have provided an alternative, rapid, and robust method other than LC–MS–MS for TAA detection in AH.