A Review on LC-MS Method to Determine Antipsychotic Drugs in Biological Samples

Antipsychotic drugs, a class of psychiatric medication used to treat psychotic symptoms mainly in bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other psycho-organic disorders. Antipsychotics are administered in oral doses of only few milligrams per day and are widely metabolized in the body, hence the concentration of these drugs in plasma is very low (pg-ng/ml levels), which complicate their detection using standard gas chromatography – mass spectrometry (GC-MS) procedures that cannot provide the required sensitivity. Due to the wide use of these drugs worldwide, there is a great need of analytical methods to analyze them in biological samples. Highly sensitive, selective and accurate bioanalytical methods are essential in order to conduct the pharmacology and toxicology studies and clinical TDM of antipsychotics. Recent advances in liquid chromatography – mass spectrometry (LC-MS) technique enables accurate detection and quantification of these drugs. This review provides LC-MS procedure for detection and quantification of antipsychotics with focus on sample preparation techniques.