Simultaneous analysis of haloperidol, its three metabolites and two other butyrophenone-type neuroleptics by high performance liquid chromatography with dual ultraviolet detection

We investigated simultaneous determination of haloperidol (HAL), its three metabolites [reduced HAL (R-HAL), 3-(4-fluorobenzoyl)propionic acid (FBPA) and 4-(4-chlorophenyl)-4-hydroxypiperidine (CPHP)] and two related compounds [spiperone (SPI) and droperidol (DRO)] in phosphate-buffered saline using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with dual ultraviolet detection (220 and 250 nm). Retention times of HAL, R-HAL, FBPA, CPHP, SPI and DRO were 16.8, 11.8, 10.2, 4.1, 12.6 and 8.3 min, respectively. Their lower limits of detection were 7.5, 14, 4.5, 12, 10 and 20 ng/mL in the same order. The coefficients of variation for their intra- and inter-day assays were less than 7.8 and 9.4%, respectively. Of the other centrally acting drugs, only amoxapine interfered with the peak of DRO. Using our procedure, the binding study of tested compounds to synthetic melanin, human serum albumin and alpha1-acid glycoprotein was performed by determining the unbound concentration to total concentration ratio. These results indicated that simultaneous assay of HAL, R-HAL, FBPA, CPHP, SPI and DRO in phosphate-buffered saline by HPLC equipped with dual ultraviolet detection is simple, sensitive and reproducible. Also, our assay system can be applied to the binding study of these compounds to synthetic melanin, human serum albumin and alpha1-acid glycoprotein.