Wujian, J.Kuan-wei, P.Sihyung, Y.Huijing, S.Mario, S.Wang, Zhuo2016-12-222016-12-222015-03-30Wujian J, Kuan-wei P, Sihyung Y, Huijing S, Mario S, et al. (2015) A Simple Protein Precipitation-based Simultaneous Quantification of Lovastatin and Its Active Metabolite Lovastatin Acid in Human Plasma by Ultra-Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry using Polarity Switching. J Chromatogr Sep Tech 6:268. doi:10.4172/2157-7064.1000268https://hdl.handle.net/1808/22285Lovastatin is an anti-cholesterol lactone drug indicated for the treatment of hyperlipidemia and to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. It is converted to the β-hydroxy acid form (lovastatin acid) in vivo, which is the major pharmacologically active metabolite. Here, we describe the development and validation of an ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS)-based method utilizing polarity switching for the simultaneous quantification of lovastatin and lovastatin acid in human plasma. Simple protein precipitation extraction and direct injection of the extracted samples without drying/reconstitution showed good recoveries of both analytes (~70%). The developed method exhibited satisfactory intra-day and inter-day accuracy and precision. The interconversion between lovastatin and lovastatin acid during sample preparation and storage was minimal (< 1.9%). The lower limits of quantification were 0.5 and 0.2 nM (or 0.2 and 0.084 ng/mL) for lovastatin and lovastatin acid, respectively, using only 50 μL of plasma during extraction. The validated method was successfully applied to analyze plasma samples obtained from a healthy human subject who enrolled in a clinical drug interaction study involving lovastatin.© 2015 Wujian J, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/LovastatinLovastatin acidUPLC-MS/MSPolarity switchingProtein precipitation extractionPharmacokineticsArticle10.4172/2157-7064.1000268openAccess