No abstract

A method employing capillary electrophoresis (CE) with tandem mass spectrometry (MS) has been developed for the simultaneous determination, on one hand, of zidovudine (AZT) with stavudine (d4T), and on the other hand, of lamivudine (3TC) with a didanosine metabolite (ddA), four potent human immunodeficiency virus reverse transcriptase (RT-HIV) inhibitors. The influence of several parameters (pH and ionic strength of volatile formic acid-ammonia buffer) as well as the influence of magnesium cation upon electroosmotic flow, electrophoretic mobility and peak efficiency has been studied. The limit of detection (LOD) by this method is 2.5 ppb for AZT and 20 ppb for d4T, 2 ppb for ddA and 5 ppb for 3TC, respectively. This paper illustrates the current importance in CE-ESI/MS/MS technique as a complementary or substituted method to measure levels (at ng/mL) of anti-HIV drugs alone or in combination.

We describe the analysis of two potent anti-human immunodeficiency virus reverse transcriptase (RT-HIV) inhibitors, zidovudine (AZT) and stavudine (d4T), among a pool of natural nucleosides (A, C, G, U, T) by capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE)-ionspray-tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) in positive ion mode. Several volatile formic acid-ammonia buffers having the same ionic strength (50 mM) but different pH values varying in the 9-11 pH range were prepared and tested to determine the best electrophoretic migration conditions. Quantitative CZE-MS/MS analysis was performed using selected reaction monitoring (SRM) mode. Finally, this CZE-MS/MS procedure opens the possibility for future determination of several nucleoside RT-HIV inhibitors in cell pool samples.