Simultaneous determination of sertraline, imipramine and alprazolam in human plasma samples using headspace solid phase microextraction based on a nanostructured polypyrrole fiber coupled to ion mobility spectrometry
Abstract
This paper describes the development of a simple, rapid, and sensitive method based on headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) combined with ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) for the simultaneous determination of antidepressant drugs, sertraline (SER), imipramine (IMI) and alprazolam (ALP), in human plasma samples. IMS equipped with corona discharge (CD) ionization along with HS-SPME has been successfully applied for quantitative analysis without derivatization steps. A dodecylbenzenesulfonate doped polypyrrole coating was used as a fiber for HS-SPME. The effects of various parameters on microextraction efficiency, including extraction temperature, extraction time, ionic strength, salt concentration and pH of the sample, were also evaluated and optimized to obtain the best HS-SPME results. The HS-SPME-IMS method provided good repeatability (RSD ≤ 5%) for three replicate analyses and a linear calibration range between 0.3–5 μg mL−1, 0.5–5 μg mL−1 and 1–5 μg mL−1 for sertraline, imipramine and alprazolam, respectively (R2 > 0.99). The limits of detection for sertraline, imipramine and alprazolam were 0.08, 0.12 and 0.27 μg mL−1, respectively. The proposed method was applied for determination of sertraline, imipramine and alprazolam in human plasma samples. The analytical procedure was validated by using percentage of recovery and was confirmed by the add-found method in human plasma samples. The analyte recoveries obtained were in the range of 93–97%. The proposed method provides several advantages such as high sensitivity, good repeatability, organic solvent-free, and being less time-consuming and relatively inexpensive as compared to HPLC.