Goal
To separate and quantify opioids at very low levels in oral fluid with superior sensitivity compared to 2.1 mm I.D. chromatography.
Background
Over the past three decades oral fluid has emerged as a highly valuable biological specimen and is commonly used in numerous settings, including therapeutic drug monitoring, and workplace and roadside drug testing. Oral fluid analysis has many advantages compared with other matrices such as blood or urine. These include collection convenience and reduced sample collection overheads.Whilst oral fluid itself is a relatively clean matrix, comprising mostly of water and a small percentage of proteins, the popularity of the specimen has led to the development of a large variety of collection devices, aiming to further simplify and standardize collection. Typically these devices will include additives and preservatives to improve the stability of the collected sample. One of the key analytical challenges with oral fluid analysis is the limited amount of sample available for testing compared with blood or urine, requiring very sensitive instrumentation to reach the low levels of detection and quantification. The ionKey/MS™ System offers the capability of improving sensitivity in sample-limited situations, making it ideally suited for this application. Performing analysis of oral fluid samples taken directly from a collection device provides a streamlined method for reducing workflow and increasing throughput. The use of a trapping column prior to analytical separation allows the removal of additives (e.g., surfactants) that can cause suppression in LC-MS and lead to reduced sensitivity. Trapping can also provide improved peak shape for hydrophilic small molecules, and crucially enables enhanced loading for ionKey/MS. Furthermore, the trapping column adds a layer of protection similar to that of a guard column, for precious downstream consumables, making the analytical method more robust.
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