Application of gas chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry for identification, confirmation and quantification of 6 phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE-5) inhibitors (sildenafil, dimethylsildenafil, homosildenafil, thiosildenafil, thiodimethylsildenafil and thiohomosildenafil) in dietary supplements was investigated. The MS was operated in multiple reaction monitoring mode, for better sensitivity and selectivity. In this manner, the method is adequate to reduce background noise with less interference from co-eluting compounds in the samples. Two different ionisation techniques, electron ionisation (EI) and chemical ionisation (CI), were studied and compared. The chromatographic separation was performed on a short 10 m non-polar capillary column without any derivatisation step. This permitted fast analysis for all analogues with retention time less than 11 min, for both techniques. Use of backflushing can aid method retention time reduction and improves column maintenance. Evaluation of method validation included limit of detection (LOD), lower limit of quantitation (LLOQ), linearity, precision and recovery were performed for both EI and CI techniques. The LOD obtained varied from 0.03 to 1.50 μg/g and the LLOQ ranged from 0.10 to 5.00 μg/g. Good calibration linearity was obtained for all analogues for both techniques, with correlation coefficients (r(2)) higher than 0.99. Mean recoveries of all analogues using CI show higher values (83.4-108.8%) than that of EI (61.9-91.1%). The intra- and inter-assay precisions were evaluated for all analogues at spiked concentration of 10 μg/g and the relative standard deviation was less than 15% for both methods. These methods were then successfully applied to dietary supplement samples without prior derivatisation, confirming that the samples were adulterated with sildenafil and/or its analogues.
A simple, rapid, specific and reliable UFLC coupled with ESI-MSMS assay method to simultaneously quantify sildenafil and N-desmethyl sildenafil, with loperamide as internal standard, was developed. Chromatographic separation was performed on a Thermo Scientific Accucore C18 column with an isocratic mobile phase composed of 0.1% v/v formic acid in purified water-methanol (20:80, v/v), at a flow rate of 0.3 mL/min. Sildenafil, N-desmethyl sildenafil and loperamide were detected with proton adducts at m/z 475.4 > 58.2, 461.3 > 85.2 and 477.0 > 266.1 in multiple reaction monitoring positive mode, respectively. Both analytes and internal standard were extracted by diethyl ether. The method was validated over a linear concentration range of 10-800 ng/mL for sildenafil and 10-600 ng/mL for N-desmethyl sildenafil with correlation coefficient (r(2) ) ≥0.9976 for sildenafil and (r(2) ) ≥0.9992 for N-desmethyl sildenafil. The method was precise, accurate and stable. The proposed method was applied to study the bioequivalence between a 100 mg dose of two pharmaceutical products: Viagra (original) and Edyfil (generic) products. AUC0-t , Cmax and Tmax were 2285.79 ng h/mL, 726.10 ng/mL and 0.94 h for Viagra and 2363.25 ng h/mL, 713.91 ng/mL and 0.83 hour for Edyfil. The 90% confidence interval of these parameters of this study fall within the regulatory range of 80-125%, hence they are considered as bioequivalent.