LAUSR

BACKGROUND Polypharmacy is a common practice in schizophrenia. Consequently, therapeutic drug monitoring is usually adopted to maintain the concentrations of the drugs in the plasma within a targeted therapeutic range, to maximize therapeutic efficiency and to diminish adverse side effects. METHODOLOGY This study reports on a column switching UHPLC-MS/MS method to determine psychotropic drugs in plasma samples simultaneously. RESULTS The method was linear from 0.025 to 1.25 ng ml-1 with R2 above 0.9950 and the lack of fit test (p > 0.05). The precision values presented coefficients of variation lower than 12%, and the relative standard error of the accuracy were lower than 14%. CONCLUSION The column switching UHPLC-MS/MS method developed herein successfully determined drugs in schizophrenic patients' plasma samples for therapeutic drug monitoring.