SOFT 2004 Meeting Abstracts - Society of Forensic Toxicologists

A56
AUTOMATED SOLID PHASE EXTRACTION PROCEDURE FOR THE SIMULTANEOUS
ANALYSIS OF DELTA-9-TETRAHYDROCANNABINOL (THC), ll-HYDROXY-DELTA-9­
TETRAHYDROCANNABINOL (11-0H-THC), AND Il-NOR-DELTA-9-TETRAHYDRO­
CANNABINOL-9-CARBOXYLIC ACID (THCC) IN BLOOD, PLASMA, AND ORAL FLUID BY
GCIMSIMS
Paul J. Davis*' \ Nadine Koenigl, Joann Sell I and Dean F. Fritch2, lHealth Network Laboratories, 2024
Lehigh Street, Allentown, PA, 20raSure Technologies, Inc., 150 Webster Street, Bethlehem, PA
A forensic automated procedure for the quantitative determination of THC, II-OH-THC, and THCC in
whole blood, plasma, and oral fluid by GCIMS/MS is presented. Samples are treated with acetonitrile,
acidified with dilute acid, and all three analytes are simultaneously extracted by solid phase extraction
using the Caliper Life Sciences Zymark RapidTrace® Solid Phase Extraction Workstation with Varian
SPEC® C-IS SPE cartridges. The RapidTrace® conditioned the SPE cartridges with methanol, added the
sample, washed the cartridges with water/methanol, dried the cartridges with nitrogen, and then eluted the
three cannabinoids with hexane/ethyl acetate. The final extracts were evaporated, derivatized with BSTFA
with 1% TMCS, and analyzed by GCIMSIMS using the Varian 1200 Quadrupole GCIMSIMS System.
Quantitation was accomplished using THC-d3 and THCC-d3 as internal standards. Two product ions were
chosen for each analyte with one product ion serving as the qualifier ion. Retention time had to be within
I% and the ion ratio of the qualifier product ion within 20% for identification of the analytes. The limit of
quantitation (LOQ) for THC and II-OH-THC is I ng/mL while the LOQ for THCC is 5 ng/mL. The limit
of detection (LOD) for THC and II-OH-THC is 0.5 ng/mL, and 2.5 ng/mL for THCC. Both THC and 11­
OH-THC are linear to at least 40 ng/mL While THCC is linear to at least 200 ng/mL. The recovery of all
three analytes was approximately 50% for all three specimen types tested. At the LOQ for all three
analytes, between-run precision resulted in a relative standard deviation ofless then 12%.
Key words: THC, Automated, GCIMS/MS
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