High-performance liquid chromatographic assay for nanogram determination of chlorpromazine and its comparison with a radioimmunoassay.

A specific and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method for the quantitative determination of plasma chlorpromazine concentrations is described. The procedure is capable of determining 1 ng of chlorpromazine/ml and is adequate for following plasma concentration-time profiles after 7-mg single intravenous doses. After a simple organic extraction of the drug and an internal standard (mesoridazine) from plasma, the organic layer was transferred to a vial and evaporated to dryness at 55 degrees under nitrogen. The residue was dissolved in 200 microliters of HPLC grade acetonitrile. Aliquots (70-100 microliters) were chromatographed, and the drug was quantitated in the range of 1-15 ng/ml of plasma using a fixed-wavelength UV detector. Plasma concentrations determined by the method were compared with those obtained by a previously reported radioimmunoassay specific for chlorpromazine and N-desmethylchlorpromazine. The two methods agreed favorably with a correlation coefficient of 0.993 and a slope of 0.994.