Determination of clozapine and its metabolites in serum and urine by reversed phase HPLC

A rapid, specific and sensitive method using reversed phase HPLC for the simultaneous determination of clozapine and its two metabolites in serum and urine has been developed. The mobile phase was a mixture of 67% (v/v) methanol in water containing 0.4% tetramethylethylenediamine and 0.32% acetic acid (pH 5.5). The influence of methanol content, the pH of the mobile phase and the effect of adding alkylammonium ions as peak tailing reducer in the mobile phase have been investigated. The solvent for extracting clozapine from serum and urine was ether. 50 microliters of 0.25 M H2SO4 solution was used to redissolve the dry residue to eliminate the endogenous compounds which could otherwise be eluted together with clozapine from the HPLC column. The analysis of a single sample was accomplished within half an hour. The identities of the chromatographic peaks of clozapine and its N-demethyl metabolite collected from the patient urine sample were confirmed by mass spectrometry. The method is sufficiently sensitive (5 ng/ml) and reproducible (CV 2.9%-6.7%) for clinical and pharmacokinetic studies, and preliminary results in these respects are presented.