PerkinElmer has produced an effective LC/MS/MS method providing a fast, accurate and reproducible solution for the analysis of pain management drugs.
Introduction
The widespread use of opiates and the potential for abuse, misuse, diversion and augmentation have increased the need and, in some cases, the requirement to screen patients on a routine basis. Pain panels continue to grow in complexity as more prescription and non-prescription compounds are added. There has been a significant increase in the number and availability of drug analogues which has, in turn, made the job of toxicological analysis ever more challenging.
In the work presented here, an LC/MS/MS method has been developed for the analysis of a pain management panel comprising 12 analytes, on a QSight™ 220 Triple Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer, combined with a Biotage™ Supported Liquid Extraction (SLE) platform for urine sample cleanup.
Experimental
The separation was performed on a PerkinElmer Altus® UPLC® system, which includes two pumps, autosampler, degasser and column oven. The UHPLC system was coupled to a PerkinElmer QSight 220 Mass Spectrometer with HSID™ (hot surface induced desolvation) interface, run in ESI mode. A PerkinElmer Brownlee™ Phenyl Hexyl Column (100 x 2.1 mm, 2.7 μm) was used for all analyses (PerkinElmer, Shelton, CT, USA). All instrument control, analysis and data processing was performed using the Simplicity 3Q™ software platform.
Conclusions
A 5-minute LC/MS/MS method was shown to be effective in the separation and identification of 12 pain panel drugs. The LOQs for all 12 drugs were in the range of 0.019 to 0.781 ng/mL, which is three to four orders lower than the typical screening cutoff concentration (300 ng/mL) and the typical confirmation cutoff concentration (50 ng/mL) for drugs of abuse. Based on the results, the Altus 30 UPLC® with the QSight 220 mass spectrometer was shown to be very effective for monitoring both patient drug use and program adherence for drugs of abuse.
