In-tube solid-phase microextraction based on hybrid silica monolith coupled to liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry for automated analysis of ten antidepressants in human urine and plasma

A rapid, sensitive and automated in-tube solid-phase microextraction-liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (in-tube SPME/LC–MS) method was developed for the analysis of ten antidepressants in urine and plasma. A hybrid organic–inorganic silica monolith with cyanoethyl functional groups was prepared and used as a sorbent for in-tube SPME. Integration of the sample extraction, LC separation and MS detection into a single system permitted direct injection of the diluted urine or plasma after filtration. Under the optimized conditions, good extraction efficiencies for the targets were obtained with no matrix interference in the subsequent LC–MS. Automation of the sampling, extraction and separation procedures was realized under the control of a program in this study. The total process time was 30 min and only 30 μL of urine or plasma was required in one analysis cycle. Good linearities were obtained for ten antidepressants with the correlation coefficients (R) above 0.9933. The limits of detection (S/N = 3) for ten antidepressants were found to be 0.06–2.84 ng/mL in urine and 0.07–2.95 ng/mL in plasma. The recoveries of antidepressants spiked in urine and plasma were from 75.2% to 113.0%, with relative standard deviations less than 16.5%. The developed method was successfully used to analyze urine sample from ageing patients undergoing therapy with antidepressants.