A new method for the therapeutic drug monitoring of chlorpromazine in plasma by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry using dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction

Abstract

Background: Chlorpromazine is the first antipsychotic drug developed and is included in the list of ‘essential drugs’ prepared by the WHO. Therapeutic drug monitoring is an important point for psychotropic drugs because of significant genetic variability in their metabolism and poor compliance of the patients with treatment. Method: We developed a novel GC–MS method using dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction for the therapeutic monitoring of chlorpromazine. Results: The method was validated according to the European Medicines Agency guidelines. The developed method’s lower limit of quantification was set as 30 ng/ml. The calibration curve of chlorpromazine was validated between 30 and 600 ng/ml, with correlation coefficients of more than 0.99. Conclusion: The developed method was applied to real human patient plasma.