Validation and interlaboratory comparison of anticoagulant rodenticide analysis in animal livers using ultra-performance liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry

Abstract

Anticoagulant rodenticides (ARs) are used to control rodent populations. Poisoning of non-target species can occur by accidental consumption of commercial formulations used for rodent control. A robust method for determining ARs in animal tissues is important for animal postmortem diagnostic and forensic purposes. We evaluated an ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS) method to quantify 8 ARs (brodifacoum, bromadiolone, chlorophacinone, coumachlor, dicoumarol, difethialone, diphacinone, warfarin) in a wide range of animal (bovine, canine, chicken, equine, porcine) liver samples, including incurred samples. We further evaluated UPLC-MS in 2 interlaboratory comparison (ILC) studies; one an ILC exercise (ICE), the other a proficiency test (PT). The limits of detection of UPLC-MS were 0.3–3.1 ng/g, and the limits of quantification were 0.8–9.4 ng/g. The recoveries obtained using UPLC-MS were 90–115%, and relative SDs were 1.2–13% for each of the 8 ARs for the 50, 500, and 2,000 ng/g spiked liver samples. The overall accuracy from the laboratories participating in the 2 ILC studies (4 and 11 laboratories for ICE and PT studies, respectively) were 86–118%, with relative repeatability SDs of 3.7–11%, relative reproducibility SDs of 7.8–31.2%, and Horwitz ratio values of 0.5–1.5. Via the ILC studies, we verified the accuracy of UPLC-MS for AR analysis in liver matrices and demonstrated that ILC can be utilized to evaluate performance characteristics of analytical methods.