Simultaneous Quantification of Mesalamine and Its Metabolite N-Acetyl Mesalamine in Human Plasma by LC-MS/MS and Its Application to a Bioequivalence Study

Liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) was used for simultaneous quantification of mesalamine and its metabolite N-acetyl mesalamine in human plasma with N-acetyl mesalamine D3 as an internal standard (IS). Chromatographic separation was performed on a Thermo, HyPURITY C18 (150 x 4.6 mm, 5 m) column with an isocratic mobile phase composed of 10 mM ammonium acetate and methanol in the ratio of 85:15 (%v/v), at the flowrate of 0.6 mL/min. The drug, metabolite and internal standard were extracted by liquid-liquid extraction. The method was validated over a linear concentration range of 2-1500 ng/mL for mesalamine and 10-2000 ng/ml for N-acetyl mesalamine, which demonstrated intra and inter-day precision ranging from 1.60 to 8.63% and 2.14 to 8.67% for mesalamine and 0.99 to 5.67% and 1.72 to 4.89% for N-acetyl mesalamine respectively. Similarly, the intra- and inter-day accuracy varied from 102.70 to 105.48% and 100.64 to 103.87% for mesalamine, 99.64 to 106.22% and 100.71 to 104.27% for N-acetyl mesalamine respectively. Both analytes were found to be stable throughout freeze–thawing cycles, bench top and postoperative stability studies. The method was successfully applied to support a bioequivalance study of healthy subjects.