New bioanalytical method for the quantification of (-) - hydroxycitric acid in human plasma using UPLC-MS/MS and its application in a Garcinia cambogia pharmacokinetic study.

A new, rapid, selective and sensitive UPLC-MS/MS method was developed and validated for the quantification of (-) - hydroxycitric acid (HCA) in human plasma, using DL-malic acid-2,3,3-d3 as internal standard (IS) and simple protein precipitation for the sample preparations. HCA is a highly polar compound make challenging its determination in biological fluids. A specific chromatography column Acquity UPLC HSS T3 (100 × 2.1 mm, 1.8 μm), eluted with mobile phase composed of acetonitrile/ammonium hydroxide 0,1 % (15:85, v/v) were applied for the HCA quantification. The bioanalytical method showed high-throughput achieving as fast chromatographic run as 1 min per sample. No matrix effect was observed with excellent mean chromatographic peak areas ratio of 0.98 ± 0.07 and CV% of 7.17 from normal, lipemic and hemolyzed plasma lots. Calibration curves range was linear at 0.05-10 μg/mL, presenting adequate mean correlation coefficient great than 0.99. Excellent intra-assay and inter-assay precision were achieved, ranging from 5.02-12.01 % (CV%) as well as great intra- and inter-assay accuracy from 0.29-9.20 % (RE%). UPLC-MS/MS bioanalytical method was efficiently applied to the HCA pharmacokinetic study analyzing more than 670 plasma samples.