Simultaneous biomonitoring of common food carcinogen acrylamide and its major metabolites using fast urinary...

Acrylamide (AA) is a probable carcinogen, often found in the environment and food, which causes various cancers in humans. Therefore, it is vital to have a facile, quick, sensitive analytical method for biomonitoring AA and its metabolites (including glycidamide (GA), N-acetyl-S-(2-carbamoylethyl)-l-cysteine (AAMA), N-acetyl-S-(2-carbamoyl-2-hydroxyethyl)-l-cysteine (GAMA)) in human urine sample for exposure risk and toxicology assessment applications. In this study, we presented a rapid sample pre-treatment technique named "fast urinary metabolites extraction technique" (FaUMEx) coupled with UHPLC-MS/MS method for efficient biomonitoring of AA and its metabolites in human urine samples. In the FaUMEx technique, two syringes were integrated for liquid-liquid extraction, followed by a micro-solid phase clean-up process. The fully optimized and validated FaUMEx/UHPLC-MS/MS technique yielded good detection and quantification levels (LOD of 0.01-0.2 ng/mL, and LOQ of 0.5-0.05 ng/mL for AA, GA, AAMA, and GAMA, respectively). The inter- and intra-day analysis shows reliable relative recoveries ranging from 82.9 to 116.8 % with <12 % RSD. Moreover, the matrix effect ranged from -8.9 % to +7.7 %, demonstrating the excellent cleanup efficiency towards quantifying AA and its metabolites from the human urine samples with minimal matrix interferences. Thus, the presented method is simple, efficient, and sensitive, and can be applied for biomonitoring applications.