Computer-assisted liquid chromatography for automated qualitative and quantitative analysis of toxic drugs

A computer-assisted liquid chromatographic system (MCASYST) is evaluated for automatic qualitative and quantitative analysis of toxic drugs in poisoned human fluids. The system performance is confirmed by the actual analyses of several cases of poisoning. The results indicate that the accuracy of identification by retention prediction and UV spectral search is very high, and quantitation by the memorized calibration curves can be performed very conveniently. However, it is difficult at present to identify all peaks that appear in chromatograms for human urine and serum because the drugs may be changed to their metabolites in those fluids. Metabolite identification will be the next step to improve the performance of this system.