Determination of ketamine, methamphetamine and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine in human hair by flash evaporation-gas chromatographymass spectrometry.
A rapid and sensitive method utilizing flash evaporation-gas chromatographymass spectrometry (FE-GCMS) has been developed. The method is applicable to determine ketamine (KET), methamphetamine (MAMP) and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) in human hair. Cut and weighted hair (0.30 mg) was heated at the flash evaporation temperature of 350 °C. KET, MAMP and MDMA were released into a capillary column for GCMS analysis and produced fragment ions in SIM mode. Validation of the method included evaluation of linearity, sensitivity, accuracy, precision and repeatability. Linearity ranged from 2 to 300 ngmg for KET in hair and 2 to 200 ngmg for MAMP and MDMA in hair with the correlation coefficients all greater than 0.998. Limits of detection were 0.7 ngmg and limits of quantification were 2.0 ngmg of hair for KET, MAMP and MDMA. The precision ranged from 1.57% to 7.75% for KET, 1.49% to 7.10% for MAMP and 1.84% to 8.31% for MDMA. The recovery ranged from 102.1% to 110.9% for KET, 99.3% to 108.0% for MAMP and 89.5% to 112.6% for MDMA. Six authentic hair samples from known drug abusers and three drug-free hair samples from volunteers who had never used drugs were successfully analyzed. Compared with traditional time-consuming and hair-comsuming pretreatment method, FE-GCMS was a faster, simpler and low sample consumption method for the determination of KET, MAMP and MDMA in human hair.