[Improvement of a multi-target screening analysis for drugs using a QTRAP liquid chromatography/tandem mass...

We have investigated the usefulness of an improved multi-target screening method based on liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) analysis on a hybrid triple-quadrupole linear ion trap mass spectrometer for detecting major drugs in toxicological analysis. Fifteen drugs, most frequently detected in intoxicated patients treated at the emergency medicine section in our institute, were mixed together in serum or urine at concentration of 100 ng/ml each, and then extracted by liquid-liquid extraction using 1-chlorobutane, followed by an analysis using LC/MS/MS. By setting the collision energy at the multiple reaction monitoring mode and declustering potential at the enhanced product ion scan mode individually for each drug, clinically satisfactory sensitivity was attained for the detection of drugs in extracted samples. The results of the present study on several serum/urine samples of intoxicated patients indicated that this method is superior to other screening methods in reliability. Taken together, our improved LC/MS/MS analysis is useful for detecting major drugs causing intoxication in the field of emergency medicine.