Applications of Gas Chromatography for the Analysis of Tricyclic Antidepressants in Biological Matrices

Abstract

Tricyclic antidepressant drugs (TCAs) are a main category of antidepressants, which are until today widely used for the treatment of psychological disorders due to their low cost and their high efficiency. Therefore, there is a great demand for method development for the determination of TCAs in biofluids, especially for therapeutic drug monitoring. Gas chromatography (GC) was the first chromatographic technique implemented for this purpose. With the recent development in the field of sample preparation, many novel GC applications have been developed. Herein, we aim to report the recent application of GC for the determination of tricyclic antidepressants in biofluids. Emphasis is given to novel extraction techniques and novel materials used for sample preparation.