Drug Screening of Hair by Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

Hair has become an important matrix for drug analysis, complementary to blood and urine as a matrix. A prolonged detection window makes hair analysis suitable for the detection of exposure to illegal and medicinal drugs for periods up to 12 months. In the present study, a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS) method for drug screening in hair was developed and validated. To 20 mg of hair, 0.45 mL of acetonitrile/25 mM formic acid (5:95 v/v) and 50 microL of deuterated internal standards were added, and the sample was incubated in a water bath at 37 degrees C for 18 h. LC separation was achieved with a Zorbax SB-Phenyl column (2.1 x 100 mm, 3.5-microm particle). Mass detection was performed by positive ion mode electrospray LC-MS-MS and included the following drugs/metabolites: nicotine, cotinine, morphine, 6-monoacetylmorphine, codeine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, 3,4-methylenedioxymeth-amphetamine, cocaine, benzoylecgonine, 7-aminonitrazepam, 7-aminoclonazepam, 7-aminoflunitrazepam, oxazepam, diazepam, alprazolam, zopiclone, zolpidem, carisoprodol, meprobamate, buprenorphine, and methadone. Within- and between-assay relative standard deviations varied from 2.0% to 12% and 2.7% to 15%, respectively. The accuracies were in the range of -24% to 16%, and recoveries ranged from 25% to 100%. The LC-MS-MS method proved to be simple and robust for the determination of drugs in hair. It has been used for authentic samples in our laboratory in the past year.

On-line solid phase extraction coupled with liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry for the determination of codeine in human plasma

“…This method awards compensation over those previously reported [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]23 in terms of time per sample clean-up, improved separation speed by monolithic column and high-throughput due to fast chromatographic run time synchronized to sample extraction (3.0 min). On-line SPE-LC-MS/MS method allowed a rapid assay development and sample processing.…”

“…Inter-day accuracy ranged from 0.03 to 3.80%, and inter-day precision ranged from 4.35 to 7.25, as shown in Table 2. Although, the toxicological and forensic methods [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] described here are sufficiently precise and accurate for the measurement of codeine in human plasma, this current method showed excellent results, with intra and inter-day accuracy and precision less than 10% and within the ranges specified by ANVISA guideline. 17 Other automated and pharmacokinetics determination of the codeine 18-23 also failed to achieve intra-day precision less than 5% as was obtained in this study.…”

“…Most forensic application methods determined codeine with long chromatographic run time. [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] Therefore, mobile phase optimization is important to improve peak shape and sensitivity detection as well as codeine and tramadol chromatographic run time reduction (IS).…”

“…Several studies have demonstrated that it is still a drug of choice for treating acute and chronic pain. [1][2][3][4][5] Although, many bioanalytical methods have been developed for determination of codeine by LC-MS/MS and CG-MS, such as toxicological and forensic aplicattions, [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] most of these methods are based on off-line liquid-liquid or solid phase extraction (SPE). These procedures require complex steps and laborious repetitive work for sample clean-up, which may not meet the requirement for high-throughput, robustness and speed in bioanalysis and pharmacokinetic studies.…”

Using biological samples in epidemiological research on drugs of abuse

“…Some applications does in addition use LC coupled to fluorescence or chemiluminescence (74). Sensitive multianalyte methods for drugs of abuse have been published (76,77), making hair screening somewhat less labour intensive.…”