Dried blood spots for the quantification simultaneous administration of the antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs

Liquid chromatography-tandem mass (LC MS/MS) was used for the determination of therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of the three antipsychotics (aripiprazole, quetiapine and olanzapine) and three antidepressants (paroxetine, Escitalopram and sertraline) drugs simultaneously. Both groups of drugs can be concurrently used to treat behavioral disorders. It appears that there is no test for the rapid detection of all six compounds simultaneously using LC MS/M, despite the fact that several analysis publications found these drugs individually. 50µl of taken from finger pricks as dried blood spots (DBS) spiked with sample solution containing the six understudied drugs was extracted. A C_18-BEH column with a mobile phase made up of gradient elution ammonium acetate with acetonitrile in methanol. The total run time of this method is about 5.5 min. LC MS/MS showed an excellent linearity in the range of 5-100ng ml^-1 with a correlation coefficient (r) >0.992. The values of the intra- and inter-day precision of the tested drugs satisfy the regulatory requirements' acceptance criteria. The test was approved in accordance with accepted standards for bioanalytical procedures and it can be successfully applied for therapeutic drug monitoring studies for the tested drugs if they administered concurrently or individually.