Simultaneous determination of lovastatin and its metabolite lovastatin acid in rat plasma using UPLC-MS/MS with positive/negative ion-switching electrospray ionization: Application to a pharmacokinetic study of lovastatin nanosuspension

Lovastatin (LOV) is an antihyperlipidemic agent which exhibits low bioavailability due to its poor solubility. Therefore, a nanosuspension (NS) was developed as an efficient strategy to improve its oral bioavailability. To evaluate the pharmacokinetics of LOV-NS, a novel, sensitive, and rapid UPLC-MS/MS method was developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of LOV and its metabolite lovastatin acid (LOVA) in rat plasma. Simvastatin (IS) was chosen as the internal standard, and a liquid-liquid extraction method was used to isolate LOV and LOVA from biological matrices. The analytes were analyzed on an Acquity UPLC BEH C18 column, and a gradient program was applied at a flow rate of 0.2 mL/min. Then, a tandem quadrupole mass spectrometer coupled with a positive/negative ion-switching electrospray ionization interface was employed to detect the analytes. Quantitation of the analytes was performed in the multiple reaction monitoring mode to monitor the transitions of m/z 427.1 → 325.0 for LOV and m/z 441.1 → 325.0 for IS in the positive ion mode and m/z 421.0 → 101.0 for LOVA in the negative ion mode, respectively. The method was validated over the concentration range 0.25-500 ng/mL (r2 ≥ 0.99) for both LOV and LOVA. The intra-day and inter-day precision (RSD%) of LOV and LOVA were less than 12.87% and the accuracy (RE%) was less than 5.22%. The average extraction recoveries were 90.1% and 91.9% for LOV and LOVA, and the matrix effects were found to be between 85% and 115%. The stability study showed that both analytes were stable during the experiment. Finally, this method has been successfully applied to a pharmacokinetic study in rats following a single oral dose of 10 mg/kg LOV-NS.