Quantification of 5F-CUMYL-P7AICA in blood and urine from an authentic fatality associated with its consumption by UHPLC–MS/MS

Abstract

Establishment of ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography–triple quadrupole-tandem mass spectrometry method was essential for quantification of 5F-CUMYL-P7AICA in authentic biological specimens. This method was fully validated and applied to a fatal intoxication case, which occurred in late 2019, in Poland. Blood, urine, and gastric content samples were extracted with ethyl acetate from alkaline medium (pH 9). The analysis was carried out using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. JWH 018-d11 was used as internal standard. Validation criteria were evaluated for blank blood and urine at concentrations of 0.1, 1 and 10 ng/mL. The validation parameters were as follows: lower limit of quantification: 0.1 ng/mL for blood and urine; coefficients of determination: blood > 0.9991 and urine > 0.9988; intra- and interday accuracies and precisions for both matrices: not greater than 15%; recoveries for both matrices: 88–107%; matrix effects: 89–119%. In the present case of death associated with 5F-CUMYL-P7AICA consumption, the determined concentrations were 2.8 ng/mL in blood and 3.1 ng/mL in urine. In gastric contents, 5F-CUMYL-P7AICA could not be detected. The developed method enabled for determination of 5F-CUMYL-P7AICA in human blood and urine with high sensitivity and selectivity. To our knowledge, this is the first report to quantify 5F-CUMYL-P7AICA in blood and urine of an authentic case with full validation.