Enantiomeric screening of racemic citalopram and metabolites in human urine by entangled polymer solution capillary electrophoresis: An innovatory robustness/ruggedness study

Several CE methods have been developed to achieve the chiral separation of citalopram (CIT) and its metabolites demethylcitalopram (DCIT), didemethylcitalopram (DDCIT), and citalopram N‐oxide (CIT‐NO). All of these compounds were present as racemic mixtures. The best method, which led to the first ever chiral screening of CIT, DCIT, DDCIT, and CIT‐NO, involved the use of carboxymethyl‐γ‐CD (CM‐γ‐CD) and the entangled polymer hydroxypropylmethylcellulose (HPMC) as chiral and selectivity additives, respectively, in the buffer system. In an effort to improve the selectivity and sensitivity of the method, the chemical and instrumental parameters were optimized. The best conditions were short‐end anodic hydrodynamic injection (6 s, 0.7 psi); as BGE pH 5, 20 mM phosphate buffer, 0.2% w/v CM‐γ‐CD, 0.05% w/v HPMC; voltage of 28 kV with a ramp applied (0.4 s); cartridge temperature of 20°C; detection at 205 nm. In addition, a simple and rapid achiral CE method for the determination of citalopram propionic acid (CIT‐PA, the only anionic metabolite of CIT) is also reported for the first time. Prior to the electrophoretic procedure it was necessary to apply an extraction and preconcentration step to obtain analytes from the human urine samples. This was achieved using an optimized SPE process. Moreover, an innovatory experimental and statistical design approach, which involves the simultaneous evaluation of the global robustness and ruggedness effects, was applied. Both of the proposed methods proved to be very useful in the chiral pharmacokinetic screening of CIT and related metabolites in clinical human urine samples.