Establishment and validation of the LC-MS/MS method for the determination of lincomycin in human blood: Application to an allergy case in forensic science

Abstract

An analytical method to quantify lincomycin in human blood samples by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) has been developed and validated. The selected method was based on a protein precipitation extraction (PPE) with methanol. Instrumental determination was carried out by LC-MS/MS, with quantification based on the internal standard method. Linearity for lincomycin was established in the concentration range of 5–100 ng/mL. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) were 0.2 and 1 ng/mL, respectively. Analyte recoveries were in the range of 72.70%–84.13% for spiked blood samples. The accuracies ranged between 92.82% and 100.40%, and the intraday and inter-day precisions ranged between 1.19% and 6.40%, respectively. The developed method was applied to an authentic allergy case of lincomycin. By testing the lincomycin content in the venous blood of the deceased and combined with the pathological test results, lincomycin acute allergy appeared to be the most likely cause of death. The acquired results confirm that the developed method is capable of identifying and quantifying lincomycin in human blood and can be suitable for the detection of allergy cases in clinical or forensic science.