Rapid, sensitive and validated ultra-performance liquid chromatography/mass spectrometric method for the determination of fenofibric acid and its application to human pharmacokinetic study

Abstract

The first, rapid and sensitive ultra performance liquid chromatography mass spectrometric method for the determination of fenofibric acid, the active metabolite of fenofibrate, a lipid regulating agent, in human EDTA plasma has been developed and validated using fenofibric d6 acid as internal standard and Waters LC-MS/MS. Negative ions of fenofibric acid and fenofibric d6 acid were detected in multiple reaction-monitoring (MRM) mode. The method was validated over a concentration range of 0.176 μg/mL to 19.837 μg/mL (r ≥ 0.99). It took only 1.5 minute to analyse a sample. Intraand inter-run precision of fenofibric acid assay at four concentrations ranged from 0.5% to 4.3% with accuracy varied from 93.1 to 108.1% indicating good precision and accuracy. Analytical recoveries of fenofibric acid and internal standard in plasma were less than 90%. This method was successfully applied for evaluation of pharmacokinetics of fenofibric acid after a single oral dose of 145 mg fenofibrate to 10 Indian healthy volunteers.