Rapid determination of quetiapine in blood by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Application to post-mortem cases

Abstract

A simple, fast and sensitive method for the determination of quetiapine in human blood has been developed and validated. The method involved a basic liquid-liquid extraction procedure and subsequent analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, previous derivatization with bis(trimethylsilyl)-trifluoro-acetamide and chorotrimethylsilane (99 : 1). The methods of validation included linearity with a correlation coefficient>0.99 over the range 0.02-1μgml-1, intra- and interday precision (always<12%) and accuracy (mean relative error always<12%) to meet the bioanalytical acceptance criteria. The limit of detection was 0.005μgml-1. The procedure was further applied to post mortems from the Institute of Legal Medicine, University of Santiago de Compostela. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.