Development and validation of bioanalytical UHPLC-UV method for simultaneous analysis of unchanged fenofibrate and its metabolite fenofibric acid in rat plasma: Application to pharmacokinetics

Abstract

A simple, precise, selective and fast ultra-high performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC-UV) method has been developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of a lipid regulating agent fenofibrate and its metabolite fenofibric acid in rat plasma. The chromatographic separation was carried out on a reversed-phase Acquity® BEH C18 column using methanol–water (65:35, v/v) as the mobile phase. The isocratic flow was 0.3 ml/min with rapid run time of 2.5 min and UV detection was at 284 nm. The method was validated over a concentration range of 100–10000 ng/ml (r2 ⩾ 0.9993). The selectivity, specificity, recovery, accuracy and precision were validated for determination of fenofibrate/fenofibric acid in rat plasma. The lower limits of detection and quantitation of the method were 30 and 90 ng/ml for fenofibrate and 40 and 100 ng/ml for fenofibric acid, respectively. The within and between-day coefficients of variation were less than 5%. The validated method has been successfully applied to measure the plasma concentrations in pharmacokinetics study of fenofibrate in an animal model to illustrate the scope and application of the method.

Keywords

• Fenofibrate
• Fenofibric acid
• Method validation
• RP-UHPLC
• Pharmacokinetics