Determination of torasemide in human plasma and its bioequivalence study by high-performance liquid chromatography with electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry$

A sensitive and selective method using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with elec-trospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC–ESI–MS) to determine the concentration of tor-asemide in human plasma samples was developed and validated. Tolbutamide was chosen as the internal standard (IS). The chromatography was performed on a Gl Sciences Inertsil ODS-3 column (100 mm ? 2.1 mm i.d., 5.0 mm) within 5 min, using methanol with 10 mM ammonium formate (60:40, v/v) as mobile phase at a flow rate of 0.2 mL/min. The targeted compound was detected in negative io-nization at m/z 347.00 for torasemide and 269.00 for IS. The linearity range of this method was found to be within the concentration range of 1–2500 ng/mL (r?0.9984) for torasemide in human plasma. The accuracy of this measurement was between 94.05%and 103.86%. The extracted recovery efficiency was from 84.20% to 86.47% at three concentration levels. This method was also successfully applied in pharmacokinetics and bioequivalence studies in Chinese volunteers.