Fast Ephedrine Quantification by Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry

Ephedrines are widely used in therapy. Because of their stimulant properties, these substances are relevant in different forensic fields. At present, the state of the art for ephedrines quantification relay based on a liquid chromatography mass spectrometry, mainly because of the dilute-and-shoot approach. Notwithstanding, several gas chromatography based methods have already been described, all of them include cleanup steps, with the potential disadvantage of incurring errors and increasing the workload. In this paper, a straightforward method for ephedrine quantification based on gas chromatographic mass spectrometry, without cleanup and based on Doehlert matrix optimization is presented. Only 10 µL of a urine sample is necessary and for N-methyl-N-(trimethylsilyl)trifluoroacetamide/N-methyl-bis-trifluoracetamide derivatives, the intermediate precision was 2.77% for ephedrine, 9.20% for cathine, 8.29% for norephedrine and 4.27% for pseudoephedrine. The limit of detection was 20 ng mL-1 for ephedrine, 30 ng mL-1 for cathine and 40 ng mL-1 for norephedrine and pseudoephedrine.