Capillary Electrophoretic Determination of Citalopram in Pharmaceutical Tablets and Serum

Determination of citalopram by capillary electrophoresis is described. Compounds were separated at 28 kV in 75 μm i.d. fused silica capillary tubing (total length 85 cm, effective length 65 cm) with 10 mM borate buffer, pH 8.5, containing 10% (v/v) methanol as running buffer. Citalopram and propylparaben (IS) appeared at 3.5 and 5.5 min, respectively. Repeatable linear results were obtained. The limits of detection and quantification were 5.73 × 10⁻⁶ and 1.72 × 10⁻⁵ M, respectively. When citalopram was determined in a pharmaceutical tablet by capillary electrophoresis and by a UV-spectrophotometric method differences between the results were not significant. The citalopram content of tablets was 100.8 ± 2.95% of the label claim. The amount found in serum was 26.7 ± 0.1% of the free drug, indicating that 73.3% of the drug was bound to protein.