In the current study, we established and validated a simple and sensitive liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometric method for the determination of 21-hydroxy deflazacort in nude mice plasma, and such a method was applied to a pharmacokinetic study. Using betamethasone as the internal standard, the plasma samples were pre-treated by precipitation with acetonitrile and then analyzed on a reversed-phase C18 column （50 mm×2 mm, 5 μm） with a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile and 4.0 mM ammonium formate （pH was adjusted to 3.5 with formic acid （40：60, v/v））. The analyte was detected by a triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometer using electrospray, and multiple reaction monitoring was employed to select 21-hydroxy deflazacort at m/z 400.2/124.0 and betamethasone at m/z 393.3/147.0 in the positive ion mode. The calibration curves were linear （r〉0.99） over the range of 0.5~,00 ng/mL. The intra- and inter-day precisions and accuracies were 4.5%-10.1% and -1.7%-10.7% respectively. This method was successfully applied to a preclinical administered with a single oral dose of 4 mg/kg deflazacort, and its pharmacokinetic study of deflazacort on female nude mice pharmacokinetics was characterized by a two-compartment model with first-order absorption.
