Simultaneous determination of major phytocannabinoids, their main metabolites, and common synthetic cannabinoids in urine samples by LC-MS/MS

Simultaneous determination of major phytocannabinoids (THC, CBD, CBN), their main metabolites (11-OH-THC, THC-COOH, THC-COOH-glucuronide) and common synthetic cannabinoids (HU-210, JWH-018, JWH-073, JWH-250) remains an issue in forensic toxicology. The present study has developed a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method to simultaneously detect the above 10 analytes in human urine samples. The chromatographic separation was performed on an ACQUITY UPLC (R) BEH Phenyl 1.7 mu M (2.1 x 100mm) column, using a mobile phase consisting of 0.1% formic acid in water and acetonitrile at a flow rate of 0.3 mL/min in gradient elution mode. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) of all analytes were 0.01-0.5 ng/mL and 0.05-1 ng/mL, respectively. The assay was linear from LOQ to 100 ng/mL for phytocannabinoids, their main metabolites and HU-210, and from 0.05 to 50 ng/mL for JWH-250, JWH-018 and JWH-073. The extraction recoveries were over 50% and the matrix effects were between 59.4% and 100.1%. The accuracy and precision were <10.4% of bias and <10.5% of relative standard deviation (RSD), respectively. The developed method was applied to 5 urine samples from real caseworks, and the results that THC metabolites together with synthetic cannabinoids were detected demonstrated the effectiveness of our method. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.