Simultaneous Determination and Quantitation of Diosmetin and Hesperetin in Human Plasma by Liquid Chromatographic Mass Spectrometry With an Application to Pharmacokinetic Studies

Among the secondary metabolites which are widely distributed in plants and foods in plant origin flavonoids is important one. Flavonoids have antioxidant activities as free radical scavenging action. They also have anti-inflammatory, antiulcer and anti-carcinogenic activities. Diosmin and hesperidin, the metabolites of which are diosmetin and hesperitin respectively are considered in the present study. Diosmetin has anticancer, antioxidant and blood lipid lowering activities. It also enhances venous tone and microcirculation and by reducing systemic oxidative stress it protects capillaries. Hesperitin also has antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, blood lipid and cholesterol lowering, anti-carcinogenic activities. In the present study efforts were given to develop and validate a bioanalytical method for simultaneous estimation of diosmetin and hesperitin in human plasma by liquid chromatography electron spray ionization mass spectrometry with an application to the analysis of plasma samples obtained from the comparative pharmacokinetic studies on healthy human volunteers under the framework of bioequivalence study. The developed method for simultaneous determination and quantification of diosmetin and hesperitin in human plasma was validated as per the US-FDA guidelines. The validation parameters found within the specified regulatory limit, hence acceptable. The present method also has a short run time (6.0 min) and easy extraction process. The developed method was found to be simple, specific, highly selective, sensitive and reproducible. This was applied for the analysis of the volunteer plasma samples. On the basis of comparison of the AUC0−t, the relative bioavailability of the test preparation was found 100.94 and 95.09% for diosmetin and hesperitin respectively of that of the reference preparation.