Journal of analytical toxicology | 2021
Investigation of a QuEChERS Based Method for Determination of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Rat Plasma by GC/MS.
Abstract
Owing to their toxic effects on humans and the environment, sensitive biomonitoring of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is essential and significant. In this work, a sensitive, simple and rapid bioanalytical method was established for the simultaneous determination of thirteen (PAHs) in rat plasma depending on QuEChERS as a preliminary step and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) for identification. QuEChERS procedure was optimized where acetonitrile was employed for plasma samples extraction which was further cleaned using primary secondary amine as the sorbent material. Optimization of GC/MS conditions was performed to produce optimum selectivity of the proposed method. The method was fully validated for rat plasma samples where recoveries, matrix effects, limit of quantitation, linearity, and precision were evaluated. Linearity range was 5.0-100.0 ng/mL for most of the thirteen analytes. Average recoveries of the thirteen PAHs ranged between 85.57 % to 109.64 % in fortified rat plasma with standard deviations (SDs) less than 8.91 except for anthracene which showed 19.24. The limits of detection (LODs) and quantitation (LOQs) for the thirteen compounds ranged from 0.045 to 0.372 ppb and from 0.137 to 1.128 ppb respectively. The established method was successfully implemented to perform a minor toxicokinetic study in intraperitoneally dosed rats (0.25 and 2 mg/kg in vegetable oil). The thirteen PAHs were tracked in rat plasma samples for 6 h after administration, and most of the target compounds were recognized in plasma samples only at the higher dose.