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Schizophrenia is a mental disorder affecting approximately one percent of the population worldwide. The introduction of the second generation antipsychotic drug, atypical antipsychotic, clozapine, has demonstrated 80% reduction in suicide incident. This drug showed effectiveness in the treatment of resistant schizophrenia, however, high concentrations of clozapine and N-desmethylclozapine in plasma exhibit the development of agranulocytosis, a possible lethal blood disorder. Therefore, constant therapeutic drug monitoring is important for patients who receive clozapine. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is the current assay for clinical clozapine measurement. A different assay, the capillary electrophoresis (CE) was explored in this study. It was found the use of a background electrolyte (BGE) concentration of 60 mM, pH at 2.5, temperature at 22 ℃, voltage applied at 10 kV and sample injection at 23 kV for 1.5 seconds is the optimal condition for clozapine separation using a fused-silica capillary 75 μm in internal diameter (i.d.). The use of 75 μm (i.d.) fused-silica capillary not only permits a larger sample size, but also provided longer detection pathlength which increased the limit of detection for CE. One hundred and eight patients’ samples were analysed by CE and compared with HPLC results obtained from the Canterbury Health Laboratory. A linear regression line of 1.100 was obtained. Seven External Quality Control (EQC) samples were also analysed and compared to the HPLC results gained from the EQC program world wide. A linear regression line of 1.008 and 1.043 were obtained from clozapine and N-desmethylclozapine separation respectively. The developed CE method has shown to be a valid assay for clozapine and N-desmethylclozapine separation and a more cost effective method compared to HPLC.

Study objectives were to; 1) determine if supplementing of n-3 fatty acids improves membrane integrity, and hence viability and motility of stallion spermatozoa following cold storage, and following cryopreservation, and 2) determine if n-3 supplementation alters the fatty acid composition of stallion spermatozoa. Data indicate that following 90 d of n-3 supplementation daily sperm output and the percentage of morphologically normal sperm in neat semen are increased. Omega-3 supplementation for 90 d did not improve spermatozoal motility or viability following short-term preservation (0, 24 h, 48 h), or following cryopreservation. Although motility was unchanged in this study, individual stallion responses did indicate that n-3 supplementation in stallions with marginal to poor semen quality may benefit from n-3 supplementation. Finally, n-3 fatty acid supplementation does alter plasmalemma fatty acid composition. Spermatozoa from supplemented stallions had increased docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) concentrations as compared to non-supplemented stallions. It is postulated that an increase in long chain n-3 fatty acids, specifically DHA in spermatozoa membrane improves membrane integrity, and thus enhances spermatozoa recovery following the stresses of cold storage and cryopreservation. This phenomenon appears to be beneficial to stallions with marginal to poor quality ejaculates.

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