Screening of methylenedioxyamphetamine‐ and piperazine‐derived designer drugs in urine by LC–MS/MS using neutral loss and precursor ion scan

Abstract

This study describes a method for the screening of methylenedioxyamphetamine- and piperazine-derived compounds in urine by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. These substances, characterized by possessing common moieties, are screened using precursor ion and neutral loss scan mode and then quantified in multiple reaction monitoring acquisition mode. Based on the product-ion spectra of different known molecules, chosen as 'model', characteristic neutral losses and product ions were selected: piperazines were detected in precursor ion scan of m/z 44 and neutral loss of 43 and 86 while amphetamines in precursor ion scan of m/z 133, 135 and 163. The applicability of the screening approach was studied in blank urine spiked with selected analytes and processed by solid-phase extraction. Linearity, matrix effect, precision, accuracy, limits of detection and limits of quantification were evaluated both for the screening and the quantification methods. The ability of the screening method to provide semi-quantitative data was demonstrated. This method appears to be a useful tool for the identification of designer drugs derived from piperazines or methylenedioxyamphetamines and can be potentially applied to other drug classes.

Characteristic fingerprinting based on macamides for discrimination of maca (Lepidium meyenii) by LC/MS/MS and multivariate statistical analysis

“…Precursor ion scanning is commonly used to detect and screen chemical compounds with the same nucleus; this model was designed for reconfirmation of macamides in maca. The fragmentation ions of N ‐benzyl amide ( m / z 91 and 108) and N ‐( m ‐methoxybenzyl) amide ( m / z 121 and 138) were selected as precursor ions .…”

Recreational Use, Analysis and Toxicity of Tryptamines

“…Moreover, instrumental screening methods were developed also for other NPS, but they do not always include tryptamines [ 101 - 103 ].…”

Detection and Quantification of 56 New Psychoactive Substances in Whole Blood and Urine by LC–MS/MS

“…As far as we are aware, most published methods for the detection of NPS focus on single substance groups such as cathinones [42][43]45,51,53,64], tryptamines [65], piperazines [41,46] or 2C/DOX substances [44]. Methods covering several substance classes include fewer substances than the method presented here [47,52,58,62] or are intended for qualitative screening purposes rather than quantification [40,42,50,60,64].…”

“…While synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists make up a significant part of the NPS phenomenon, readers interested in these compounds are kindly referred to the publications of our EU project partners [33][34][35][36][37]. Several methods have been published for the detection of NPS in urine [38][39][40][41][42][43][44], plasma/serum [45][46][47][48][49][50], whole blood [51][52][53], hair [54][55][56][57], oral fluid [58], nails [59], dried blood spots [60], as well as multiple matrices [61][62][63][64][65]. However, these methods often focus on only one or two substance classes or a limited number of substances [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][51][52][53][54][55]58,62,…”