A simple, rapid and sensitive liquid chromatography / tandem mass spectrometry method was developed and validated for the quantification of pravastatin in human plasma. Topiramate was used as an internal standard. The analytes were extracted from human plasma samples by liquid-liquid extraction technique. The reconstituted samples were chromatographed on a C18 column by using a 90:10, v/v mixture of acetonitrile and 5 mM ammonium acetate as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. The calibration curve obtained was linear (r ³ 0.99) over the concentration range of 0.20-499.04 ng/mL. The results of the intra- and inter-day precision and accuracy studies were well within the acceptable limits. A run time of 1.5 min for each sample made it possible to analyze more than 400 plasma samples per day. The proposed method was found to be applicable to clinical studies.
