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Establishment and application of a screening method for 354 organic toxicants in blood and urine with high-performance liquid chromatography–high-resolution orbitrap mass spectrometry

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A Correction to this article was published on 06 December 2022

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Abstract

A rapid and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography–high-resolution orbitrap mass spectrometry method was developed for the simultaneous screening of 354 organic poisons and metabolites in blood and urine, including drugs, medications, pesticides, rodenticides, veterinary drugs, alkaloids, and mycotoxins with a multi-toxicant chromatography-mass spectrometry information library. The method and library showed good prospects in clinical poisoning screening and forensic toxicological identification. Blood and urine samples were extracted successively with ethyl acetate in acidic and alkaline conditions; then, the extract was blown to nearly dry by nitrogen gas and redissolved with methanol-aqueous solution (v:v, 50:50), and the dissolved solution was analyzed by LC-MS/MS after filtering. Precursor ions’ m/z was set for identification, retention time, fragment ions, and isotopic pattern which were used for confirmation. No interference peaks were found in the blank samples, showing good specificity. The LODs of toxicants in urine and blood were 1.00×10−3–50.0 ng/mL and 2.07×10−3–50.0 ng/mL, respectively, while the LOQs were 3.30×10−3–1.67×102 ng/mL and 6.91×10−3–1.67×102 ng/mL. The intra-day precision and inter-day precision of urine samples were 2.31–9.13% and 4.75–12.3%, respectively, which were 1.92–10.8% and 2.01–12.1% in blood samples. The established method was applied to analyze 9 cases of clinical poisoning patients, and bromadiolone, carbofuran, and amanitins were detected, respectively. A total of 382 biospecimens from drug abusers were analyzed with the proposed method, which indicated that some drugs were detected in 62 cases, mainly including methamphetamine, heroin, and MDMA. The results were consistent with the information from traditional liquid chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry.

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Funding

This study was supported by the Key Project of Sichuan Province Science and Technology (Grant No. 2020YFS0056).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Health Laboratory Science, West China-PUMC C.C.Chen Institute of Health, West China School of Public Health and West China Fourth Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610041, People’s Republic of China

    Zhuoya Li, Xinyi Huang, Xuan Wang, Jianwei Ren & Xiaoli Zou

  2. National Anti-drug Laboratory Sichuan Regional Center, Chengdu, 610041, People’s Republic of China

    Buyi Xu

  3. Chengdu Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Chengdu, 610041, People’s Republic of China

    Chunying Luo & Lian Wang

  4. Sichuan Provincial Public Security Department, Chengdu, 610036, People’s Republic of China

    Yanjun Wang

  5. Department of Health and Environmental Sciences, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan

    Kouji H. Harada

Authors
  1. Zhuoya Li
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  2. Xinyi Huang
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  3. Xuan Wang
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  4. Jianwei Ren
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  6. Chunying Luo
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  7. Yanjun Wang
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  8. Lian Wang
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  9. Kouji H. Harada
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  10. Xiaoli Zou
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Contributions

Zhuoya Li: methodology, writing — original draft. Xinyi Huang: methodology, writing — review. Xuan Wang: methodology, data curation. Jianwei Ren: methodology, data curation. Buyi Xu: resources, validation. Chunying Luo: validation. Yanjun Wang: resources. Lian Wang: instrument operation. Kouji Harada: Writing — review and editing. Xiaoli Zou: conceptualization, funding acquisition.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Lian Wang, Kouji H. Harada or Xiaoli Zou.

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As this study does not involve any work on humans or animals, no study-specific approval by the appropriate ethics committee was required.

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The original online version of this article was revised: First and last name of “Harada Kouji” were interchanged. Middle initial was also not included. It should be “Kouji H. Harada

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Li, Z., Huang, X., Wang, X. et al. Establishment and application of a screening method for 354 organic toxicants in blood and urine with high-performance liquid chromatography–high-resolution orbitrap mass spectrometry. Anal Bioanal Chem 415, 493–507 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-022-04432-6

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