Fast Quantitative LC-MS/MS Determination of Illicit Substances in Solid and Liquid Unknown Seized Samples.

Giuseppe M Merone,Cristian D’Ovidio,Elisa Bassotti,Marcello Locatelli,Enrica Rosato,Fabio Savini,Francesco Santavenere,Martina Bonelli,Ugo De Grazia,Angela Tartaglia,Sandra Rossi

doi:10.1021/acs.analchem.1c03310

Giuseppe M Merone, Cristian D’Ovidio + Show 9 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.1c03310

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Abstract

Narcotic and psychotropic substances are natural, synthetic, or semisynthetic compounds that are present in both solid and liquid illicit products. The alterations effects on the central nervous system related to their use can be psycholeptic, psychoanaleptic, or psychodiseptic and are able to generate tolerance, addiction, or dependence phenomena, creating social and public order problems. In this scenario, the analytical evaluations that aim to determine these analytes in seized nonbiological samples, and which assume the character of judicial evidence, must meet high analytical requirements of reliability, transparency, and procedures uniformity at a national level. For the first time in the literature, the herein validated method is able to provide the simultaneous quantitative determination of 37 of the most common narcotic substances as well as the most commonly used excipients/adulterants found in seized illicit material. Additionally, the validated method can process both solid and liquid samples maintaining the precision and trueness levels (intraday and interday) in accordance with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency international guidelines (<14.31 and <13.41%, respectively). Furthermore, it provides a simple and fast procedure for sample preparation using the dilute and shoot approach, exploiting the sensitivity and selectivity of the LC-MS/MS instrument configuration used and the signal acquisition in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode (both positive and negative polarization modes).

Highlights

Narcotic and psychotropic substances are natural, synthetic, or semisynthetic compounds that are present in both solid and liquid illicit products
The chemical standards used for the calibration curves, the QC samples, the HPLC mobile phases, and the solutions used in the sample extraction/dilution procedure were purchased from Eureka srl Lab Division
The major advantage of the reported procedure could be represented from the easy sample preparation process that followed the principle of dilute and shoot, avoiding the excessive sample manipulation. This simple procedure included a step in which the deuterated internal standards were added and subsequently subject to LC-MS/MS analysis

Summary

Introduction

Narcotic and psychotropic substances are natural, synthetic, or semisynthetic compounds that are present in both solid and liquid illicit products. By applying the same chromatographic parameters, it was observed that the characteristics required, such as focusing the analytes in tight peaks to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio and the sensitivity, avoiding the presence of matrix effects by resolving possible interferents through chromatography, and increasing the parameters for the correct identification considering the reproducibility of the retention time, are maintained in the analyses of both liquid and solid seized samples.

Results

Conclusion