Talanta Open (Aug 2023)
Efficient flat membrane based liquid phase microextraction of cathinones from environmental water and biological samples
Abstract
Cathinone drugs are one kind of new psychoactive substances, which are widely acknowledged to be harmful. Thus, rapid and efficient extraction of cathinone drugs from biological materials is of great importance in the field of forensic medicine and public health. In this work, flat membrane-based liquid phase microextraction (FM-LPME) was applied to extract five cathinone drugs [cathinone (Cath), methcathinone (MCath), 4-methyl-methcathinone (Mephe), ethylcathinone (ECath), and 4-fluoromethcathinone (FMCath)] from spiked environmental water, whole blood and urine samples, respectively. Interestingly, two binary supported liquid membrane (SLM) solvents containing the mixture of 1-ethyl-2-nitrobenzene (ENB) and n-decanol/n-octanol were developed to obtain satisfied recoveries for cathinone drugs. The developed FM-LPME system was optimized with high performance liquid chromatography - ultraviolet (HPLC-UV), and the optimal LPME conditions depended on the sample matrices. Finally, the LPME systems were evaluated by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) with environmental and biological samples. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) of the five cathinone drugs from environmental water and biological samples were in the range of 0.07–0.69 ng/mL and 0.22–2.31 ng/mL, respectively. The linear range of cathinone drugs for environmental water samples (with R2 ≥ 0.9904) and biological samples (with R2 ≥ 0.9910) were 0.5–200 ng/mL. The repeatability and accuracy provided at 5, 50 and 200 ng/mL were 1%-10% (RSD) and 89%-113%, respectively. This work will promote the application of LPME in detection of trace level poisons/pollutants in the field of forensic toxicology analysis and wastewater-based epidemiology in the near future.
