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

Summary

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.