Articles

Methamphetamine and its metabolite amphetamine are frequently abused drugs. Whether obtained legally or from clandestine laboratories it is of relevance to determine the chiral makeup of these drugs for investigative purpose. Although urine and oral fluid matrices are commonly offered, less available to independent laboratories are techniques to verify dextro (D-) or levo (L-) (meth)amphetamine from human K2EDTA plasma. This paper outlines the development and validation of a method that includes the addition of internal standard and a two-step liquid-liquid extraction to remove the analytes from human K2EDTA plasma by triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The assay was validated according to the United States Food and Drug Administration and College of American Pathologists guidelines, including assessment of the following parameters in plasma validation samples: linear range, limit of detection, lower limit of quantitation, matrix effects, inter- and intra-day assay precision and accuracy, carry over, linearity of dilution, matrix effects and stability. The outcome is a validated and reliable method for the determination of D- and L- isomer concentration of meth(amphetamine) human plasma samples that can be easily adopted by independent clinical laboratories.