title: Investigation of an LC-MS-MS (QTrap) method for the rapid screening and identification of drugs in postmortem toxicology whole blood samples.
abstract: The QTrap liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS) by Applied Biosystems was investigated as an adjund to enzyme immunoassay (EIA) for the rapid detection of drugs in blood. Thus, a procedure used to identify drugs in whole blood by EIA was extended to LC-MS-MS analysis. A multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) database of over 100 drugs was constructed to analyze for those drugs commonly observed in postmortem toxicology cases. The QTrap method provided for a scan time of only 2.8 s to produce both an MRM and an enhanced product ion scan. Various validation and developmental steps of the method are presented, as well as a concordance study as a final means of validation. This study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of the QTrap versus conventional extraction methods and gas chromatography-MS for the identification of drugs in 95 postmortem samples. The more than 400 drug results in this study showed 100% concordance between the two techniques.
authors.affiliation: GBI Division of Forensic Sciences, P.O. Box 370808, Decatur, Georgia, USA.
authors.forename: George L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Herrin
authors.forename: H Horton
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: McCurdy
authors.forename: William H
authors.initials: WH
authors.lastname: Wall
mesh_terms: D001344:Autopsy; D002423:Cause of Death; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; D049429:Forensic Pathology / Q000379:methods; D008401:Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000097:blood*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D021241:Spectrometry, Mass, Electrospray Ionization / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D015813:Substance Abuse Detection / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations