Simultaneous Quantification of the New Psychoactive Substances 3-FMC, 3-FPM, 4-CEC, and 4-BMC in Human Blood using GC-MS

Abstract

AbstractA gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method for simultaneous quantification of 3-fluoromethcathinone (3-FMC), (±)-3-fluorophenmetrazine (3-FPM), 4-chloroethcathinone (4-CEC) and 4-Bromomethcathinone (4-BMC) in human blood with (±)-methcathinone-D3 as internal standard has been developed and validated. Whole blood samples were treated with 10% trichloroacetic acid for protein precipitation before solid phase extraction. The method was selective, the calibration curves showed linearity for all substances with R2 ranging from 0.991 to 0.998 in the range 5-1.000 ng/mL. Analysis of blank samples showed no-sign of carryover. Precision and accuracy were acceptable with values less than 20% (RSD) and ± 20% (Bias). The limit of quantification (LOQ) for all substances was 5ng/mL. Intra-day and inter-day precision were 2.111.7% and 1.3 -10.2% respectively and accuracy biases were between -10.6-19.6% % (intra-day) and 11-12.1% (inter-day). The extraction efficiencies were 85.4, 82.8, 79.1 and 74.9% for 3-FMC, 3-FPM, 4-CEC and 4-BMC respectively.A robust and reliable simultaneous quantification method using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry in selected ion monitoring mode (GC-MS-SIM) is reported.