A high-performance liquid chromatographic procedure has been developed for the determination of astemizole and its primary metabolite in plasma and animal tissues. Both compounds and the internal standard were extracted from alkalinized plasma with heptane--isoamyl alcohol and analyzed using a reversed-phase column and UV monitoring at 254 nm. The detection limits for both compounds were 1 ng/ml of plasma and 5 ng/g of tissue and extraction recoveries were sufficiently high (71-84%). The method was applied to plasma and tissue samples from dogs after repeated oral administration, and to plasma samples from a volunteer taking a 300-mg oral dose of the drug. The results were compared with those obtained by a formerly developed radioimmunoassay.