Simultaneous determination of xylazine and 2,6-xylidine in blood and urine by auto solid-phase extraction and ultra high performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry

Abstract

Xylazine as veterinary medicine for sedation, but intoxication cases in humans were identified in the last few years. A highly sensitive method is required for analyzing xylazine and its metabolites in human blood and urine. This article presents an ultra high performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QTOF) study for simultaneous determination of xylazine and 2,6-dimethylaniline (DMA) in human blood and urine. The samples were extracted and cleaned up by Oasis MCX solid-phase extraction. The analysis is performed using an UHPLCQTOF. Analysis precision, accuracy, sensitivity, linear range, limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) were validated for the proposed method. In the blood and urine samples, the linear calibration curves with high linearity are obtained over the range of 2.0- 1,000.0 ng/mL. The LOD for xylazine and DMA in blood are 0.2 and 0.1 ng/mL, in urine are 0.4 and 0.2 ng/mL; the LOQ for xylazine and DMA in blood are 0.6 and 0.3 ng/mL, in urine are 1.0 and 0.6 ng/mL, respectively. The intra- and interday precision is better than 8.6 and 11.9%. In conclusion, the proposed method is highly sensitive and reproducible, thus suitable for accurate quantification of xylazine and its metabolites in blood and urine.