Stability Issues of Mycophenolic Acid in Plasma: From Patient to Laboratory

Although mycophenolate is widely prescribed in India, therapeutic drug monitoring of mycophenolic acid is not performed in most centers. This could be due to many factors such as the large investment and expertise required for high performance liquid chromatography, or the high costs involved as specialized refrigeration is required when transporting patient specimens to the laboratories with the facility to analyze MPA. The Clinical Pharmacology unit of the Christian Medical College Hospital routinely monitors the area under the curve of MPA. In order to determine if this unit could act as a central laboratory for MPA monitoring, the stability of MPA in plasma under a series of storage and transport conditions was assessed. The procedures involved the analysis of plasma specimens from patients on mycophenolate mofetil and blank plasma spiked with MPA reference standard. A range of low and high concentrations were separately analyzed to confirm long term and short term stability. The measured concentrations of MPA showed no significant change over 5 months when stored at -20 degrees or over five days under conditions encountered during transport.