Simultaneous determination of citalopram, fluoxetine, paroxetine and their metabolites in plasma by temperature-programmed packed capillary liquid chromatography with on-column focusing of large injection volumes

A miniaturized temperature-programmed packed capillary liquid chromatographic method with on-column large volume injection and UV detection for the simultaneous determination of the three selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors citalopram, fluoxetine, paroxetine and their metabolites in plasma is presented. An established reversed-phase C8 solid-phase extraction method was employed, and the separation was carried out on a 3.5-μm Kromasil C18 0.32×300 mm column with temperature-programming from 35 (3 min) to 100°C (10 min) at 1.3°C/min. The mobile phase consisted of acetonitrile–45 mM ammonium formate (pH 4.00) (25:75, v/v). The non-eluting sample focusing solvent composition acetonitrile–45 mM ammonium formate (pH 4.00) (3:97, v/v) allowed injection of 10 μl or more of the plasma extracts. The method was validated for the concentration range 0.05–5.0 μM, and the calibration curves were linear with coefficients of correlation >0.993. The limits of quantification for the antidepressants and their metabolites ranged from 0.05 to 0.26 μM. The within and between assay precision of relative peak height were in the range 2–22 and 2–15% relative standard deviation, respectively. The within and between assay recoveries were in the 61–99 and 54–92% range for the antidepressants, respectively, and between 52–102 and 51–102% for the metabolites.