Urine analysis of buprenorphine/norbuprenorphine/ naloxone in drugs and driving cases

Abstract

Buprenorphine is now being detected as a drug of abuse in drugs/driving cases alongside side naloxone. Being a semi synthetic opiate, it has the potential to impair motorists in a similar fashion to morphine. Many laboratories have observed that buprenorphine does not produce a positive response with typical opiate immunoassays or routine basic GC-MS drug screens. In this study, samples of urine were enzymatically hydrolyzed after which they were extracted on mixed mode solid phase (SPE) columns, after which the extracted samples were analyzed by LC-MS/MS analysis in positive multiple reaction monitoring mode. The LOD/LOQ were determined to be 0.5 and 1.0 ng/mL, respectively for the analytes; linearity (10 to 1000 ng/mL) and (r 2 >0.999). The recovery of the analytes was found to be greater than 90%. Interday/intraday analysis was found to <8% and <10%, respectively. Matrix effects were determined to be <6%.