Quantification of naphthoquinone mercapturic acids in urine as biomarkers of naphthalene exposure

Abstract

Naphthalene shows carcinogenic properties in animal experiments. As the substance is ubiquitary present in the environment and has a possibly high exposure at industrial workplaces, the determination of naphthalene metabolites in humans is of environmental-medical as well as occupational-medical importance. Here, biomarkers of 1,2- and 1,4-naphthoquinone, as possibly carcinogenic metabolites in the naphthalene metabolism, are of outstanding significance. We developed and validated a liquid chromatography-tandem mass-spectrometric (LC-MS/MS) method for the simultaneous determination of the naphthoquinone mercapturic acids of 1,2- and 1,4-naphthoquinone in human urine samples as a sum of naphthoquinone- and dihydroxynaphthalene-mercapturic acid. Except for enzymatic hydrolysis and acidification, no further sample preparation is necessary. For sample clean-up, a column switching procedure is applied. The mercapturic acids are extracted from the urinary matrix on a restricted access material (RAM RP 18) and separated on a reversed phase column (Synergi Polar RP C18). The metabolites were quantified by tandem mass spectrometry using labelled D5-1,4-NQMA as internal standard. The limits of detection are 3μg/l for 1,2-NQMA and 1μg/l for 1,4-NQMA. Intraday- and interday precision for pooled urine (spiked with 10μg/l and 30μg/l of the analytes) ranges from 5.9 to 15.1% for 1,2-NQMA and from 2.0 to 10.8% for 1,4-NQMA. The developed method is suited for the sensitive and specific determination of the mercapturic acids of naphthoquinones in human urine. A good precision and low limits of detection were achieved. Application of those new biomarkers in biomonitoring studies may give deeper insights into the mechanisms of the human naphthalene metabolism.