19F NMR as a powerful technique for the assay of anti-psychotic drug haloperidol in human serum and pharmaceutical formulations

19F nuclear magnetic resonance was used as a suitable analytical tool for the identification and selective determination of haloperidol in human serum and pharmaceutical preparations. The method is based on the integration of appropriate signals of haloperidol and trifluoroacetic acid as an internal standard. The proposed method is a rapid and facile, while without any sample pretreatment, manipulation of large samples and lengthy instrument time. The regression equation for haloperidol in human serum showed a good linearity in the range of 60–600 μg ml−1 with a detection limit of 1.4 μg ml−1. The mean recovery results on human serum samples ranged from about 96–103%, with relative standard deviations <8%. The method was also applied successfully to the determination of haloperidol in real pharmaceutical samples, and compared with the results obtained by a reference method. The drug's degradation was studied by the proposed method in hydrochloric acid media and main products were identified.