Non-aqueous capillary zone electrophoresis method for the analysis of paroxetine, tamoxifen, and their main metabolites in urine

Abstract The potential of non-aqueous capillary electrophoresis (NACE) was investigated for the simultaneous separation of paroxetine, tamoxifen, and their main metabolites. Baseline separation of the studied solutes was obtained on a 57 cm ×75  μm capillary using a non-aqueous buffer composed of 18 mM ammonium acetate and 1.1% acetic acid in 80:20 (v/v) methanol–acetonitrile, with a temperature and voltage of 22 °C and 15 kV, respectively. Clomipramine was used as internal standard. Aspects such as stability of the solutions, linearity, accuracy, precision and ruggedness were examined in order to validate the proposed method. Detection limits obtained for all the studied compounds ranged between 3.0 and 7.1 μg l −1 . The developed method is sensitive and robust and was used to determine paroxetine, tamoxifen, and their metabolites at clinically relevant levels in human urine. Before NACE determination, the samples were purified and enriched by means of an extraction–pre-concentration step with a pre-conditioned C 18 cartridge. Determination of these analytes in the urine of four females urines was demonstrated.