Simultaneous determination of five HIV protease inhibitors nelfinavir, indinavir, ritonavir, saquinavir and amprenavir in human plasma by LC/MS/MS.

A sensitive and rapid liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS) method has been developed to measure the levels of five HIV protease inhibitors nelfinavir (NFV), indinavir (IDV), ritonavir (RTV), saquinavir (SQV) and amprenavir (APV) in human plasma. The analytes and internal standard are isolated from plasma by a simple acetonitrile precipitation of plasma proteins followed by centrifugation. LC-MS-MS in positive mode used pairs of ions at m/z of 568.4/330.0, 614.3/421.2, 720.9/296.0, 671.1/570.2 and 505.9/245.0 for NFV, IDV, RTV, SQV and APV, respectively and 628/421 for the internal standard. Two 1/x weighted linear calibration curves for each analyte were established for quantitation with the low curve ranging from 5 to 1000 ng/ml and while the high curve ranging from 1000 to 10,000 ng/ml. Mean inter- and intra-assay coefficients of variation (CVs) over the ranges of the standard curves were less than 10%. The overall recovery of NFV, IDV, RTV, SQV and APV were 88.4, 91.4, 92.2, 88.9 and 87.6%, respectively.