Rapid determination of citalopram in human plasma by high-performance liquid chromatography

A rapid high-performance liquid chromatographic method for the quantitation of citalopram in human plasma is presented. The sample preparation involved liquid-liquid extraction of citalopram with hexane-isoamyl alcohol (98:2 v/v) and back-extraction of the drug to 0.02 M hydrochloric acid. Liquid chromatography was performed on a cyano column (45 x 4.6 mm, 5 microm particles), the mobile phase consisted of an acetonitrile-phosphate buffer, pH 6.0 (50:50, v/v). The run time was 2.6 min. The fluorimetric detector was set at an excitation wavelength of 236 nm and an emission wavelength of 306 nm. Verapamil was used as the internal standard. The limit of quantitation was 0.96 ng/ml using 1 ml of plasma. Within- and between-day precision expressed by relative standard deviation was less than 7% and inaccuracy did not exceed 6%. The assay was applied to the analysis of samples from a pharmacokinetic study.