Quantification of 16 QT-prolonging Drugs and Metabolites in Human Postmortem Blood and Cardiac Tissue Using UPLC-MS-MS

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

  • Christian R Mikkelsen
  • Jakob Jornil
  • Ljubica V Andersen
  • Banner, Jytte
  • Jørgen B Hasselstrøm

QT-prolonging compounds present a treatment risk in mentally ill patients. Knowledge of the concentration in the heart compared with blood is necessary to assess the cardiac toxicity of QT-prolonging compounds. To address this issue, this article presents a validated analytical method for the quantification of 16 QT-prolonging drugs (QTD) and metabolites in postmortem whole blood and postmortem cardiac tissue. Samples were prepared by protein precipitation and quantified using ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. Deuterated internal standards were used. Validation results showed that the bias was ±15% and precision was ≤15% for all compounds in both matrices. The recovery ranged from 78.8 to 127.4%, and the matrix effect ranged from 61.0 to 128.7% across both matrices. The limit of detection and the lower limit of quantification were below the therapeutic concentrations of the prescription drugs. No noteworthy degradation during storage of the extracts was detected. The method was applied in five authentic cases of mentally ill patients. In conclusion, an analytical method was successfully developed and validated for the quantification of QTD in postmortem whole blood and cardiac tissue. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this article presents the first fully validated method for quantification of QTD in cardiac tissue.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Analytical Toxicology
Volume40
Issue number4
Pages (from-to)286-293
Number of pages8
ISSN0146-4760
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2016

ID: 171997393