Fully Automated Forensic Routine Dried Blood Spot Screening for Workplace Testing.

Area of Science:

• Forensic Toxicology
• Analytical Chemistry
• Automation in Laboratory Science

Background:

• Dried blood spot (DBS) and dried urine spot (DUS) technologies offer advantages for large-scale sample collection and analysis.
• Existing drug screening methods can be time-consuming and costly, limiting their application in large population studies.
• Automation is crucial for increasing throughput and reducing variability in routine toxicological analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and implement a fully automated, cost-effective workflow for drug screening using DBS and DUS samples.
• To establish both a fast screening method for high-interest drugs and an extended method for comprehensive toxicological analysis.
• To validate the automated workflow's performance, precision, and accuracy in a routine forensic toxicology setting.

Main Methods:

• Integration of DBS/DUS cards into an automated workflow featuring camera recognition, automated spiking with deuterated standards, and direct extraction.
• Online transfer of the extract to liquid chromatography (LC) and electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (ESI-MS/MS) for analysis.
• Implementation of calibration standards and internal standards for quality control, inter-day variation balancing, and in-process control.

Main Results:

• A 5-minute screening method for 28 target compounds and a 20-minute extended method capable of screening over 1,200 drugs using a Forensic Toxicology Database.
• Confident positive/negative results obtained for all tested drugs at their respective cut-off concentrations.
• Good precision (±15%, ±20% at LOQ) and correlation (5-1,000 ng/mL calibration range) demonstrated, with successful application and cross-validation against existing methods in real cases.

Conclusions:

• The fully automated workflow based on DBS/DUS technology is a robust and efficient solution for cost-effective, large-scale drug screening.
• The developed method offers high throughput, accuracy, and reliability for forensic toxicology applications.
• This automated approach significantly enhances the capabilities of routine poison control centers for drug analysis.