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This paper reports, for the first time, the development of a modified Quick, Easy, Cheap Effective, Rugged and Safe (QuEChERS) combined with a dispersive SPE (d-SPE) based clean-up procedure as a new and powerful strategy for the simultaneous and efficient isolation of two different antidepressants, fluoxetine and clomipramine, and their active metabolites in human urine samples. A univariate experimental design with four independent variables such as sample volume, extraction solvent, buffered salts and clean-up step, was performed and used to investigate the effect of process variables on the extraction efficiency. Good linearity was achieved at the studied concentration range (0.1-5.0 µg mL), with correlation coefficients (R) higher than 0.9961. Low detection limits, ranging between 0.060 and 0.092 μg mL were obtained for all analytes, whereas the lowest quantification limit was 0.1 μg mL, corresponding to the lowest concentration of the standard curve. The method also showed good results for accuracy, with values ranging from 91% to 105%. Intra- and inter-day precision, expressed as the relative standard deviation (RSD), were also satisfactory (<10%). Consistent recoveries of antidepressants ranging from 86% to 109% were observed when urine samples were fortified at three concentrations, namely 0.1, 2.5 and 5.0 μg mL In order to evaluate the proposed method for clinical use, the QuEChERS/UHPLC-PDA method was applied to analysis of 12 urine samples from depressed patients.

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