Abstract:

A chiral separation method was developed for the analysis of methamphetamine (METH) and amphetamine (AM) in hair by high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS). The samples were extracted using methanol by ultrasonication in a high-temperature water bath. The chromatographic separation was performed on a SUPELCO Astec CHIROIOTIC^® V2 column with the mobile phase of methanol-20 mmol/L ammonium acetate aqueous solution containing 0.1% (v/v) formic acid (99:1, v/v). All the compounds showed linear relationship in the range of 15-300 ng/mg (r>0.99). The limits of detection (LODs) of METH and AM were 0.1 ng/mg and 0.15 ng/mg, respectively. The limits of quantification (LOQs) of METH and AM were 0.4 ng/mg and 0.5 ng/mg, respectively. The inter-day precisions were all ≤ 6.8%, and the intra-day precisions were all ≤ 11.4%. Fifty drug abuse samples were determined by this method. Up to 70% of the cases were determined as S-(+)-METH and S-(+)-AM, while 18% of the cases were S-(+)-METH, S-(+)-AM, R-(-)-METH and R-(-)-AM. The proposed method is rapid, simple, and provides technical support and a scientific basis for the chiral analysis in actual hair samples for forensic toxicant identification.

Key words: amphetamine (AM), enantiomers, hair, high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS), methamphetamine (METH)