Three micellar-based mobile phases were developed and optimized for the simultaneous determination of certain partial dopamine agonists that are used to overcome the withdrawal symptoms of abused drugs, namely aripiprazole, pramipexole and piribedil. The studied drugs were separated using micellar liquid chromatography, hybrid micellar liquid chromatography (HMLC) and microemulsion liquid chromatography (MELC). The three developed mobile phases were studied to estimate their suitability for the measurement of log
p
-values of the studied drugs. Experimental determination of log
P
m/w
values using the three mobile phases demonstrates that HMLC is the mobile phase of choice since the obtained practical log
P
m/w
values were in accordance with the reported log
P
values, and calculated log
P
and log
D
values. An explanation of the obtained results was presented based on the separation retention mechanism for each chromatographic technique. Furthermore, the effect of the pH and the column temperature in HMLC on the practical log
P
m/w
values was studied. To verify its suitability for experimental measurement of log
P
m/w
,
HMLC was subjected to full validation according to the United States Pharmacopeia.
Studying the suitability of hybrid micelle liquid chromatography for estimating the lipophilicity of some partial dopamine agonists used to attain the reward circuit
