Determination of neomycin and bacitracin in human or rabbit serum by HPLC–MS/MS

The method for the simultaneous determination of neomycin and bacitracin in human or rabbit serum was developed by using ion pairing reversed phase chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) detection with electrospray (ESI) in positive mode. Both substances elute under these conditions at the same time and also kanamycin as internal standard elutes almost at the same time. The sample preparation was simple—only using 0.1 mL serum by protein precipitation with acetonitrile. Neomycin and bacitracin were detected as two-fold charged ions as well as the internal standard. The calibration range of these quite difficult detectable substances was 0.2–50 μg/mL of serum. The method was validated for both human or rabbit serum. The inter batch precision of quality control samples in human serum for neomycin ranged from 4.46% to 8.99% and for bacitracin from 6.85% to 11.17%. The inter batch accuracy for neomycin ranged from 98.7% to 100.7% and for bacitracin from 99.2% to 103.0%. At lower limit of quantitation (LLOQ) level of 0.2 μg/mL inter batch precision in human serum for neomycin was 12.05% and for bacitracin 11.91%, whereas accuracies were 99.9% for neomycin and 102.7% for bacitracin. Bench top stability in human or rabbit serum was given over three freeze thaw cycles and 4 h at room temperature.The method can be considered to be specific and recoveries for sample preparation were high.