Simultaneous determination of haloperidol and its metabolite, reduced haloperidol, in plasma, blood, urine and tissue homogenates by high-performance liquid chromatography.

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method was developed for the simultaneous determination of haloperidol and reduced haloperidol in human plasma, urine and rat tissue homogenates using bromperidol as an internal standard. The method involved extraction followed by injection of 50-80 microliters of the aqueous layer onto a C18 reversed-phase column. The mobile phase was 0.5 M phosphate buffer-acetonitrile-methanol (58:31:11, v/v/v) and the flow-rate was 0.6 ml/min. The column effluent was monitored by ultraviolet detection at 214 nm. The retention times for reduced haloperidol, haloperidol and bromperidol were 5.4, 7.2 and 8.4 min, respectively. The detection limits for haloperidol and reduced haloperidol in human plasma were both 0.5 ng/ml, and the corresponding values in human urine were both 5 ng/ml. The coefficients of variation of the assay were generally low (below 10.7%) for plasma, urine, blood and tissue homogenates. No interferences from endogenous substances or any drug tested were found.