LC–MS/MS method for simultaneous quantification of ten antibiotics in human plasma for routine therapeutic drug monitoring

BACKGROUND: Optimizing antimicrobial therapy to attain drug exposure that limits the emergence of resistance, effectively treats the infection, and reduces the risk of side effects is of a particular importance in critically ill patients, in whom normal functions are augmented or/and are infected with pathogens less sensitive to treatment. Achievement of these goals can be enhanced by therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) for many antibiotics. A liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) method is presented here for simultaneous quantification of ten antimicrobials: cefazolin (CZO), cefepime (CEP), cefotaxime (CTA), ceftazidime (CTZ), ciprofloxacin (CIP), flucloxacillin (FLU), linezolid (LIN), meropenem (MER), piperacillin (PIP) and tazobactam (TAZ) in human plasma. METHODS: Plasma samples were precipitated with acetonitrile and injected into the LC–MS/MS. Chromatographic separation was on a Waters Acquity BEH C(18) column. Compounds were eluted with water and acetonitrile containing 0.1 % formic acid, using a gradient (0.5–65 % B), in 3.8 min. The flow rate was 0.4 mL/min, and the run time was 5.8 min. RESULTS: The calibration curves were linear across the tested concentration ranges (0.5–250, CZO, CEP, CTA, CTZ and FLU; 0.2–100, MER and TAZ; 0.1–50, CIP and LIN and 1–500 mg/L, PIP). The intra and inter-day imprecision was < 11 %. Accuracy ranged from 95 to 114 %. CTZ and MER showed ionization suppression while CIP showed ionization enhancement, which was normalized with the use of the internal standard. CONCLUSION: An LC–MS/MS method for simultaneous quantification of ten antimicrobials in human plasma was developed for routine TDM.