Rapid and simultaneous analysis of psychotropic drugs by ultra-high-speed HPLC

Recently, the need for the analysis of psychotropic drugs has increased. With the revision of the medical treatment fees in FY2014, facilities that can be calculated in those case that could identify the drugs responsible for acute drug poisoning of a patient by instrumental analysis, including HPLC analysis, were expanded from only advanced emergency medical care centers (30 facilities nationwide) to emergency medical care centers (263 facilities nationwide). Since the responsible drugs can include barbiturate drugs used as antiepileptics and tricyclic drugs used as antidepressants, methods to analyze psychotropic drugs are needed. Moreover, in emergency medicine, it is necessary to quickly identify the cause of acute drug poisoning. Ultra-high-speed HPLC has become increasingly popular in analytical research fields. In this study, we investigated the analysis of psychotropic drugs using an ultra-high-speed HPLC system. The HPLC utilized in this study was a ChromasterUltra Rs system (Hitachi, Tokyo, Japan) equipped with a photodiode array detector. Using a LaChrom Ultra C18 column (particle size; 1.9 μm) as the analytical column, rapid and simultaneous analysis of 14 psychotropic drugs (five barbiturates, three benzodiazepines, five tri- and tetracyclic antidepressants, and trazodone) was achieved within 5 min.