A Validated Method for the Simultaneous Determination of Methamphetamine and 3,4-Methylenedioxy-N-methamphetamine in Blood-Based Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

A liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) method has been validated for the simultaneous determination of methamphetamine (MA) and 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methamphetamine (MDMA) in the blood sample. Under the optimal experimental conditions, the concentration of MA can be determined in the range from 1 µg/L to 5000 µg/L with the method detection limit (MDL) of 0.31 µg/L. The range from 0.5 to 500 µg/L is observed for the determination of MDMA with the MDL down to 0.25 µg/L. The practical applicability of the method is performed with the recovery ranging from 85.3% to 94% for MA and from 86.9% to 95.5% for MDMA. At the different concentrations of drugs, the relative standard deviations (RSD) for both MA and MDMA are lower than 5.7%. The method was applied to analyse 1995 blood samples that had been collected from the Forensic Medicine Centre of Ho Chi Minh City. The results showed 1.75% positive with MA and 0.25% positive with MDMA. These two drugs take 10% of the total drugs positive samples. By using deuterium-labelled methamphetamine-d5 and 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methamphetamine-d5 as the internal standards in the determination and the use of MS/MS in multiple reaction monitoring mode signal readout, the method exhibits robustness specificity and can be applied in simultaneous determination of MA and MDMA in blood with high selectivity and sensitivity.