Analyses of butyrophenones and their analogues in whole blood by high-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray tandem mass spectrometry

Five butyrophenones and two analogues contained in human whole blood have b een analyzed by high-performance Liquid chromatography (HPLC)-electrospray (ES)-tandem mass spectrometry (MS). All compounds gave the base peaks due t o [M+1](+) by HPLC-ES-single MS. The product ions formed from each quasi-mo lecular ion by HPLC-ES-tandem MS showed the base peaks at m/z 165 for four compounds. The mass chromatography of HPLC-ES-tandem MS showed much higher sensitivity than that of HPLC-ES-single MS for all drugs spiked to whole bl ood. Therefore, regression equations, detection limits, recovery rates and precision were studied for haloperidol, bromperidol and floropipamide spike d to human whole blood by means of mass chromatography of HPLC-ES-tandem MS . The three compounds showed good linearity in the range of 0.2-0.8 ng/ml w ith a detection limit of about 0.1 ng/ml. Recoveries of the three compounds spiked to whole blood (0.2 and 0.8 ng added to 1 mi whole blood) were 23.6 -81.2%; the coefficients of intra- and inter-day variations were 8.4-10.4 a nd 14.5-17.5%, respectively. The three compounds in whole blood could be ac tually determined 3 and 6 h after oral administration of 1 mg each of halop eridol and bromperidol, and 10 mg of floropipamide in a volunteer. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.