Study of the distribution of antidepressant drugs in vitreous humor using a validated GC/MS method.

Vitreous humor has become in recent years an important alternative biological fluid in forensic toxicological analysis especially for the investigation of cases where alcohol and drugs of abuse are involved but there is limited scientific information regarding the distribution of antidepressant drugs in this material. This work aimed to study the distribution of antidepressant drugs in vitreous humor and to estimate the blood/vitreous humor concentration ratios of these drugs. For this purpose, a GC/MS method for the simultaneous determination of 9 antidepressant drugs, namely amitriptyline, nortriptyline, citalopram, clomipramine, fluoxetine, maprotiline, mirtazapine, sertraline and venlafaxine, and 4 of their metabolites, namely desmethylmaprotiline, desmethylmirtazapine, desmethylsertraline, O-desmethylvenlafaxine, was developed and validated.