Search

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are toxic and bioaccumulative compounds that are persistent in the environment due to their water and heat resistant properties. These compounds have been demonstrated to be ubiquitous in the environment, being found in water, soil, air and various biological matrices. The determination of PFAS at ultra-trace levels is thus critical to assess the extent of contamination in a particular matrix. In this work, solid phase microextraction (SPME) was evaluated as a pre-concentration technique to aid the quantitation of this class of pollutants below the EPA established advisory limits in drinking water at parts-per-trillion levels. Four model PFAS with varying physicochemical properties, namely hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (GenX), perfluoro-1- butanesulfonate (PFBS), perfluoro-n-octanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluoro-1-octanesulfonate (PFOS) were studied as a proof of concept. Analysis was performed with the use of ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography-laminar flow tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS). This study proposes the use of hydrophilic-lipophilic balance-weak anion-exchange/polyacrylonitrile (HLB-WAX/PAN) as a SPME coating, ideal for all model analytes. A sample volume of 1.5 mL was used for analysis, the optimized protocol including 20 min extraction, 20 min desorption and 6 min LC/MS analysis. This method achieved LOQs of 2.5 ng L -   1 (PFOS) and 1 ng L  -   1 (GenX, PFBS and PFOA) with satisfactory precision and accuracy values evaluated over a period of 5 days., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

A solid phase microextraction (SPME) method followed by LC-MS/MS analysis was developed to determine the concentration of tranexamic acid (TA) in plasma. The use of a new biocompatible C18 coating allowed the direct extraction from complex biological samples without prior sample preparation; no matrix effect was observed. The results revealed that SPME was suitable for the analysis of polar drugs such as TA; such an application was previously inaccessible because of the limited availability of SPME coatings that can extract polar molecules. The proposed method was validated according to the bioanalytical method validation guidelines. LOD and LLOQ were 0.5 and 1.5 μg/ml, respectively. The recovery for the method was 0.19%, and the accuracy and precision of the method were <9 and <11%, respectively, with the exception of LLOQ, where the values were <16 and <13%, respectively. The performance of the proposed method was also compared against that of the standard techniques of protein precipitation and ultrafiltration. A statistical analysis indicated a clinically significant agreement among all assays. Another advantage of SPME over conventional techniques was the easy automation and feasibility of in vivo analysis; this advantage makes it possible to use the proposed method for an on-site analysis in clinical practice., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

A new 96-well disk solid phase extraction sample preparation technique which does not involve vacuum pumps integrated with liquid chromatographic tandem mass spectrometric (LC-MS/MS) was developed for high throughput determination of benzodiazepines (nordiazepam, diazepam, lorazepam and oxazepam). In addition, the method completely allows the re-use of the SPE disk membranes for subsequent analyses after re-conditioning. The method utilizes a robotic autosampler for parallel extractions in a 96-well plate format. Results have been presented for independent extractions from three matrices; phosphate buffer solution, urine, and plasma. Factors affecting data reproducibility, extraction kinetics, sample throughput, and reliability of the system were investigated and optimized. A total time required per sample was 0.94 min using 96-well format. Method reproducibility was < or =9% relative standard deviation for all three matrices. Limits of detection and quantitation recorded were respectively in the range 0.02-0.15 and 0.2-2.0 ng/mL with linearity ranging from 0.2 to 500 ng/mL for all matrices.

An in situ application of solid-phase microextraction (SPME) as a sampling and sample preparation method coupled to HPLC-MS/MS for direct monitoring of ochratoxin A (OTA) distribution at different locations in a single cheese piece is proposed. To be suited to the acidic analyte, the extraction phase (carbon-tape SPME fiber) was acidified with aqueous solution of HCl at pH 2, instead of the traditional sample pre-treatment with acids before SPME sampling. For calibration, kinetic on-fiber-standardization was used, which allowed the use of short sampling time (20 min) and accurate quantification of the OTA in the semi-solid cheese sample. In addition, the traditional kinetic calibration that used deuterated compounds as standards was extended to use a non-deuterated analogue ochratoxin B (OTB) as the standard of the analyte OTA, which was supported by both theoretical discussion and experimental verification. Finally, the miniaturized SPME fiber was adopted so that the concentration distribution of OTA in a small-sized cheese piece could be directly probed. The detection limit of the resulting SPME method in semi-solid gel was 1.5 ng/mL and the linear range was 3.5-500 ng/mL. The SPME-LC-MS/MS method showed good precision (RSD: approximately 10%) and accuracy (relative recovery: 93%) in the gel model. The direct cheese analysis showed comparable accuracy and precision to the established liquid extraction. As a result, the developed in situ SPME-LC-MS/MS method was sensitive, simple, accurate and applicable for the analysis of complicated lipid-rich samples such as cheese.