Achieving proposed federal concentrations using reduced specimen volume for the extraction of amphetamines from oral...

This article details the rapid extraction of amphetamines from oral fluid using low specimen volume, low sorbent bed mass, and fast gas chromatography with mass selective detection. The collection of a known amount of sample volume coupled with high percentage recovery of drug from the collection pad has allowed oral fluid to be increasingly employed as the specimen of choice for the detection of drug use in various applications. Additionally, low specimen volume for confirmation is required, so that adequate test volume remains for second analysis in case of batch failure or for testing at a different laboratory facility. The extracts were prepared using low bed mass sorbent, so less conditioning, washing, and elution solvent further reduced the overall cost of sample preparation. The limits of quantitation for the assay were 25 ng/mL; the intraday precision of the assays (n = 5) ranged from 0.3 to 3.99%; interday precision ranged from 0.72 to 4.6% for the amphetamine class. The percentage recovery of the drugs from the collection pads ranged from 85.4 to 89.1% (n = 6). The process lends itself to widely available automated processing instrumentation and significantly increases the efficiency of laboratories providing high-volume oral fluid analysis for drugs of abuse.