Simultaneous determination of rosuvastatin, naringin and naringenin in rat plasma by RRLC–MS/MS and its application to a pharmacokinetic drug interaction study

A rapid resolution liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method was developed and validated for simultaneous determination of rosuvastatin, naringin and naringenin in rat plasma. Chromatographic separation of analytes and internal standard (fluvastatin for rosuvastatin, while isoquercitrin for naringin and naringenin) was performed on Agilent Poroshell 120 EC-C18 column (3.0 × 50 mm, 2.7 μm) using gradient elution with a mobile phase of methanol and water, both with 0.1% formic acid (v/v). The detection was operated in multiple reaction monitoring mode to monitor the precursor-to-product ion transitions of m/z 579.1→270.8 for naringin, m/z 270.9→150.7 for naringenin, m/z 463.1→299.8 for isoquercitrin in negative ionization mode, and m/z 482.2→258.1 for rosuvastatin, m/z 412.1→224.1 for fluvastatin in positive ionization mode. Polarity switch (negative-positive-negative ionization mode) was performed in a total runtime of 5.0 min. The method was validated over a concentration range of 10-2,000 ng/mL for the above three analytes. The intra-day and inter-day precisions and accuracies of the quality control samples at low, medium and high concentration levels exhibited relative standard deviations <10% and the accuracy values ranged from -7.2% to 8.4%. The proposed method was successfully applied to the pharmacokinetic drug interaction study of rosuvastatin combined with naringin in rats.