Assay for screening for six antimalarial drugs and one metabolite using dried blood spot sampling, sequential extraction and ion-trap detection.

Journal article

BACKGROUND: More parasites are becoming resistant to antimalarial drugs, and in many areas a change in first-line drug treatment is necessary. The aim of the developed assay is to help determine drug use in these areas and also to be a complement to interviewing patients, which will increase reliability of surveys. RESULTS: This assay detects quinine, mefloquine, sulfadoxine, pyrimethamine, lumefantrine, chloroquine and its metabolite desethylchloroquine in a 100-µl dried blood spot. Most of the drugs also have long half-lives that make them detectable at least 7 days after administration. The drugs are extracted from the dried blood spot with sequential extraction (due to the big differences in physicochemical properties), solid-phase extraction is used as sample clean-up and separation is performed with gradient-LC with MS ion-trap detection. CONCLUSION: Detection limits (S/N > 5:1) at 50 ng/ml or better were achieved for all drugs except lumefantrine (200 ng/ml), and thus can be used to determine patient compliance. A major advantage of using the ion-trap MS it that it will be possible to go back into the data and look for other drugs as needed.

Authors: Blessborn, D; Romsing, S; Bergqvist, Y; Lindegardh, N

• Publication status: Published
• Journal: Bioanalysis
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 11
• Pages: 1839-1847
• Publication date: 2010-11-01
• DOI: 10.4155/bio.10.147
• EISSN: 1757-6199
• ISSN: 1757-6180
• Language: English
• Keywords: Chromatography, Liquid; Antimalarials; Time Factors; Humans; Blood Specimen Collection; Blood Chemical Analysis; Mass Spectrometry; Desiccation; Chemical Fractionation