Background
Ivermectin is a widely used drug for the treatment of helminthiasis and filariasis worldwide, and it has also shown promise for malaria elimination through its potent mosquito-lethal activity. The
Conclusions
The validated method proved to have high sensitivity and precision, good selectivity and to be suitable for clinical application or laboratory quantification of ivermectin in plasma or whole blood samples.
Methods
Phospholipids were removed in patient whole blood (100 µl) and plasma (100 µl) samples using a 96-well plate Hybrid-solid phase extraction technique. Ivermectin and its isotope-labelled internal standard (ivermectin-D2) were separated on an Agilent Poroshell 120 EC-C18 50mm × 3.0mm I.D. 2.7µm, using a mobile phase of acetonitrile: ammonium formate 2 mM containing 0.5% formic acid (90: 10, v/v). Detection was performed using a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer in the positive ionization mode.
Results
The method was validated in the concentration range 0.970 - 384 ng/ml in both plasma and whole blood matrices. Intra- and inter-batch precisions during the validation were below 15%. There was no carryover or matrix effects detected. Ivermectin is a stable compound and results showed no degradation in the different stability tests. Conclusions: The validated method proved to have high sensitivity and precision, good selectivity and to be suitable for clinical application or laboratory quantification of ivermectin in plasma or whole blood samples.