Solid-phase microextraction coupled with microcolumn liquid chromatography for the analysis of amitriptyline in human urine

Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) is a solvent-free sample-preparation technique that enables isolation and pre-concentration of analytes from a sample on a thin film coating a fused-silica fiber. In this study SPME coupled with microcolumn liquid chromatography (micro LC) has been used for the determination of four tricyclic antidepressants (amitriptyline, imipramine, nortriptyline, and desipramine) in human urine. SPME conditions which affect extraction efficiency were optimized, and under the optimum conditions the system was a few hundred times more sensitive than direct LC analysis without SPME. For amitriptyline the detection limit was 3 ng mL−1 and the calibration curve was linear in the range of 5–500 ng mL−1. The SPME-micro LC method has been applied to the analysis of amitriptyline in patient’s urine.