Determination of sertraline and N-desmethylsertraline in human plasma by CE with LIF detection

A method has been developed for the analysis of the antidepressant dru gsertraline together with its main metabolite N-desmethylsertraline (DMS) in human plasma. It Is based on CE with LIF detection (488nm). A SPE procedure is employed for biological sample pretreatment, followed by a derivatization step with FITC; reboxetine was the internal standard The effect of CD, acetone and N-methyl-D-glucamine (GLC) as constituents of the BGE for analyte separation was investigated. The final BGE consisted of 20mM carbonate buffer, pH9.0, with2.5 mM heptakis(2,6-di-O-methyl)-b-CD, 50mM GLC and 20% v/v acetone. With 30kV applied voltage, the electrophoretic run is completed in7.5min. Linearity was observed in the plasma concentration range from 3.0 to 500 ng/mL for sertraline and 4.0 to 500ng/mL for DMS. Extraction yield was higher than 97.1%,precision expressed as RSD% was lower 3.7, accuracy (recovery) was higher than 95.6%. Due to its sensitivity and selectivity, the method was suited for the analysis of plasma samples from patients undergoing therapy with sertraline.