Quantification of steroid glycosides from Hoodia gordonii in porcine plasma using high performance liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry

An HPLC–ESI–MS/MS method using collision induced dissociation – multiple reaction monitoring was developed for the quantification of eight Hoodia gordonii steroid glycosides and their metabolites in porcine plasma samples. The method was validated for the three most important glycosides and was successfully applied also for the related glycosides and metabolites. The limits of quantification were 0.04 ng ml−1 for the two main steroid glycosides and 0.1 ng ml−1 for the detiglated metabolites. These limits are sufficiently low to allow monitoring the concentration–time profiles in plasma after feeding H. gordonii. The standard deviations of the intra-day measurements were better than 20% for concentrations below 5 ng ml−1 and better than 10% for concentrations above 5 ng ml−1. The method was successfully applied to plasma samples collected from a porcine pharmacokinetics study.