Rapid pharmacokinetic screening of salbutamol in plasma samples by column-switching high-performance liquid chromatography electrospray mass spectrometry

In order to obtain pharmacokinetic data from studies in humans, a sensitive and selective assay for the quantification of salbutamol in human plasma samples was required. This report describes an automated high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry assay with pre-column enrichment using internal standard calibration for the quantification of salbutamol and the validation of the assay. The lower limit of quantitation is 0.2 ng/ml with an accuracy and imprecision of less than 7%. The analysis time is 8 min per sample. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.