Anticoagulants are used to prevent the coagulation of
blood samples and facilitate harvesting plasma from
whole blood. There are numerous anticoagulants available
such as EDTA, heparin, sodium citrate etc., and within
same anticoagulant different salt forms are available such
as Na-EDTA, K2-EDTA, K3-EDTA, Na-heparin and Liheparin.
It is must that the anticoagulant used in validation
should be used for sample collection during study.
This is because of the fact that the anticoagulants might
have a significant effect on the quantification of analyte in
LC–MS–MS due to matrix effect and stability.