title: Direct screening of urine for MDMA and MDA by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.
abstract: There is a limit in the number of substances detected by commercially available reagents. It is therefore important to have other, complementary techniques. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS) may offer one possibility. An LC-MS-MS procedure based on the detection of positive ions after atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) was developed for direct measurement of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine in urine. It was compared with Online Amphetamines. The LC-MS-MS methodology showed improved sensitivity (1 00-ng/mL cutoff and specificity with a coefficient of variation of 10%. It was compared to the immunochemical analysis using 1000 clinical patient urine samples. The positive samples were confirmed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The LC-MS-MS method detected almost four times as many samples positive for MDMA compared to the immunochemical method, with no false positives and one false negative. Our study suggests that LC-MS-MS offers an alternative to immunochemical methods in drug of abuse screening.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Division of Clinical Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Helena.Nordgren@ks.se
authors.forename: Helena K
authors.initials: HK
authors.lastname: Nordgren
authors.forename: Olof
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Beck
mesh_terms: D015104:3,4-Methylenedioxyamphetamine / Q000652:urine*; D002853:Chromatography, Liquid; D008401:Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry; D006801:Humans; D007120:Immunochemistry; D018817:N-Methyl-3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine / Q000652:urine*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D021241:Spectrometry, Mass, Electrospray Ionization; D015813:Substance Abuse Detection / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D015104:3,4-Methylenedioxyamphetamine; D018817:N-Methyl-3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine