title: Determination of the antimalarial drug piperaquine in small volume pediatric plasma samples by LC-MS/MS.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Determination of piperaquine (PQ) in pediatric plasma requires a method with a small sample volume.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We report a sensitive LC-MS/MS method for quantitation of PQ with only 25 µl human plasma. Using a deuterated internal standard (PQ-d6), an analytical PFP column, APCI(+) as the ion source and MRM (535/288 for PQ and 541/294 for the IS) for detection, the method has a linear calibration range of 1.5-250 ng/ml with a runtime of 3.0 min per sample. The method was applied to plasma samples from children.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The developed LC-MS/MS method is suitable for pediatric studies with small volume plasma samples collected via capillary tubes. One limitation was the performance of PFP columns varied among different brands.
authors.affiliation: Drug Research Unit, Department of Clinical Pharmacy, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
authors.forename: Linda L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Kjellin
authors.forename: Grant
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Dorsey
authors.forename: Philip J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Rosenthal
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Aweeka
authors.forename: Liusheng
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Huang
mesh_terms: D053000:Analytic Sample Preparation Methods; D000962:Antimalarials / Q000097:blood*; D001774:Blood Chemical Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D002648:Child; D002853:Chromatography, Liquid; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D006801:Humans; D011804:Quinolines / Q000097:blood*; D053719:Tandem Mass Spectrometry; D010879:Piperazines
chemical_list: D000962:Antimalarials; D011804:Quinolines; C034759:piperaquine; D010879:Piperazines