Detection and quantification of aripiprazole and its metabolite, dehydroaripiprazole, by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry in blood samples of psychiatric patients

Aripiprazole is a novel antipsychotic drug for the treatment of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders. In this study, a new method using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was developed and validated for the detection of aripiprazole and its main metabolite, dehydroaripiprazole, in plasma. Blood samples from seven psychiatric patients treated with aripiprazole (10-20 mg/day) underwent a solid-phase extraction (SPE) and N-methyl-N-trimethylsilytrifluoroacetamide (MSTFA) derivatization. The characteristic ions of mass spectra for aripiprazole and dehydroaripiprazole were m/z 306, 292, 218 and 304, 290, 218, respectively. Extraction recoveries from this method were 75.4% (n = 5) for aripiprazole and 102.3% (n = 5) for dehydroaripiprazole. The calibration curves of aripiprazole and dehydroaripiprazole were linear from 16 to 500 ng/ml (r2 = 0.999) and 8 to 250 ng/ml (r2 = 0.999), respectively. The respective limits of quantification (LOQs) for aripiprazole and dehydroaripiprazole evaluated in 0.5 ml of serum were 14.4 ng/ml and 6.9 ng/ml. Intra-assay and interassay precision and accuracy were within acceptable ranges. In this study, we also found that the mean trough concentrations in plasma at steady-state were 128.9 μg/l for aripiprazole and 30.1 μg/l for dehydroaripiprazole.