Background:
Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness that affects more than twenty-one
million people throughout the world. Schizophrenia also causes early death. Schizophrenia and other
related psychotic ailments are controlled by the prescription of antipsychotic drugs, which act by blocking
certain chemical receptors in the brain and thus relieves the symptoms of psychotic disorder. These
drugs are present in the different dosage forms in the market and provided in a certain amount as per the
need of the patients.
Objective:
Since such medications treat mental disorders, it is very important to have a perfect and accurate
dose so that the risk factor is not affected by a higher or lower dose, which is not sufficient for
the treatment. For accurate assay of these kinds of drugs, different analytical methods were developed
ranging from older spectrophotometric techniques to latest hyphenated methods.
Results:
The current review highlights the role of different analytical techniques that were employed in
the determination and identification of antipsychotic drugs and their metabolites. Techniques such as
spectrophotometry, fluorimetry, liquid chromatography, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, gas
chromatography, and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry employed in the method development of
such antipsychotic drugs were reported in the review. Different metabolites, identified using the hyphenated
techniques, were also mentioned in the review. The synthesis pathways of few of the metabolites
were mentioned.
Conclusion:
The review summarizes the analyses of different antipsychotic drugs and their metabolites.
A brief introduction of illnesses and their symptoms and possible medications were highlighted. Synthesis
pathways of the associated metabolites were also mentioned.
