Rapid Determination of Clonidine in Pharmaceutical Preparations by Paper Spray Tandem Mass Spectrometry (PS-MS/MS)

Abstract

A paper spray tandem mass spectrometric (PS-MS/MS) method without column separation was developed for the rapid screening of clonidine in dietary supplements. PS-MS/MS provided acceptable performance compared to high-performance liquid chromatography – tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) in terms of limits of detection and quantification, accuracy, and precision. To overcome ionization suppression of complicated plant-based pharmaceutical products, nizatidine, tizanidine, and apraclonidine were investigated as internal standards. A more similar structured internal standard is most suitable for matrix effect compensation. The developed method has advantages of simplicity and speed for the screening of clonidine in dietary supplements.

Keywords:

• Clonidine
• high-performance liquid chromatography – tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS)
• illicit additives
• paper spray tandem mass spectrometry (PS-MS/MS)
• pharmaceutical preparations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22276050, 22276049), the China Scholarship Council 2020 International Cooperation Training Program for Innovative Talents, the Aid Program for S&T Innovation Research Team in Higher Education Institutions, and the Construction Program of Key Disciplines of Hunan Province (2015JC1001).