We describe specific EMIT homogeneous enzyme immunoassays for amitriptyline, nortriptyline, imipramine, and desipramine in patients' serum samples. Before analysis, an easily performed extraction step involving the use of 500 microL of sample and a 1-mL disposable column eliminates cross-reacting polar metabolites. The range of the standard curve for the first three drugs is 25 to 250 microgram...

A quantitative "high-pressure" liquid-chromatographic assay for tricyclic antidepressant drugs in plasma or serum is described in which amitriptyline, nortriptyline, imipramine, desipramine, doxepin, and desmethyldoxepin are separated with a 10-micrometer particle size silica column and a methanol/NH4OH/NH4NO3 solvent system. The drugs and two internal standards are extracted with hexane/isoamy...

We performed an electronic search by using MEDLINE, PreMEDLINE, Current Contents, Biological Abstracts, and PsycINFO from June 2002 to December 2008 using the following terms: "antidepressant drugs", "antidepressive agents", "human milk", "lactation", and "breastfeeding" and the generic name of each antidepressant. Articles in the English language with reports of antidepressants in maternal ser...

A sensitive and specific HPLC method has been developed for the assay of amlodipine in human plasma. The assay involves derivatization with 4-chloro-7-nitrobenzofurazan (NBD-Cl), solid-phase extraction on a silica column and isocratic reversed-phase chromatography with fluorescence detection. Nortriptyline hydrochloride was used as an internal standard. The assay was linear over the concentrati...

A 64-yr-old male with a longstanding history of psoriatic arthritis presented with a 6-week history of dry cough without other respiratory symptoms. His other past medical history showed hypertension and type II diabetes mellitus. He took methotrexate 12.5 mg weekly (commenced 9 yrs previously), folic acid, aspirin, nortriptyline, metformin, valsartan and insulin. The patient was an ex-smoker o...

A woman aged 30, an inmate of a mental institution, was admitted to hospital two hours after ingesting at least 50 paracetamol tablets. She had been discovered while still swallowing some of the drug, and gastric lavage was carried out almost immediately. She had been under psychiatric care since adolescence and had received various drug therapies. Currently she was taking nortriptyline, 25 mg....