Petra Gerhards

Analyzing drugs of abuse (DoA) in human bodily fluids is crucial for clinical research and forensic toxicology. In these routine analyses, a large number of samples must be investigated, with a potentially high laboratory cost for each sample. As such, a reliable and affordable method is required for analysis. In this article, a fast, robust, and reliable method is presented for routine, high-throughput drug screening of urine samples.

The analysis of urine for drugs of abuse via chromatographic methods is commonplace but can be complicated by high matrix effects and frequent coelution. Novel time-of-flight mass spectrometry in combination with sophisticated deconvolution software was tested and found to provide increased confidence in results due to the high sensitivity and quality of spectra achieved.