Determination of ethyl glucuronide in human hair samples

TY - JOUR

T1 - Determination of ethyl glucuronide in human hair samples

T2 - Decontamination vs extraction

AU - Müller, Alexander

AU - Iwersen-Bergmann, Stefanie

N1 - © 2020 The Authors. Drug Testing and Analysis published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

PY - 2020/7

Y1 - 2020/7

N2 - Decontamination of samples prior to analysis is common practice and recommended for ethyl glucuronide (EtG) hair testing. The aim of this study was to evaluate the applied decontamination procedure during routine hair EtG analysis by monitoring the ethyl glucuronide concentrations in the washing solutions from a representative cohort of individual hair samples. Hair samples from 150 individuals were tested for hair EtG by a validated routine procedure (liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry). A four-step decontamination procedure (ethanol, water, acetone, dichloromethane) was applied to all samples prior to analysis. Hair samples from 20 individuals were analyzed along with the complete set of individual washing solutions. Hair samples from an additional 130 individuals were analyzed along with the corresponding aqueous wash fraction only. No EtG was detected in the washing solutions from hair samples that tested negative for EtG (n = 42). Hair samples positive for ethyl glucuronide (n = 108) were found to liberate different amounts of EtG during decontamination: whereas no, or low portions of, EtG (< 10% of extracted hair EtG) were found in the corresponding washing solutions of the majority (n = 91) of individual samples, there was a minority of samples (n = 6) with more than half of the extracted hair EtG present in the decontamination solvent. No correlation of the decontaminated amount of EtG and the extracted hair EtG was observed. Further experimental studies are necessary to investigate if the observed easily removable fraction of EtG is associated with external contamination and if analysis of wash solutions could be helpful for identifying external contamination in hair testing for ethyl glucuronide.

AB - Decontamination of samples prior to analysis is common practice and recommended for ethyl glucuronide (EtG) hair testing. The aim of this study was to evaluate the applied decontamination procedure during routine hair EtG analysis by monitoring the ethyl glucuronide concentrations in the washing solutions from a representative cohort of individual hair samples. Hair samples from 150 individuals were tested for hair EtG by a validated routine procedure (liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry). A four-step decontamination procedure (ethanol, water, acetone, dichloromethane) was applied to all samples prior to analysis. Hair samples from 20 individuals were analyzed along with the complete set of individual washing solutions. Hair samples from an additional 130 individuals were analyzed along with the corresponding aqueous wash fraction only. No EtG was detected in the washing solutions from hair samples that tested negative for EtG (n = 42). Hair samples positive for ethyl glucuronide (n = 108) were found to liberate different amounts of EtG during decontamination: whereas no, or low portions of, EtG (< 10% of extracted hair EtG) were found in the corresponding washing solutions of the majority (n = 91) of individual samples, there was a minority of samples (n = 6) with more than half of the extracted hair EtG present in the decontamination solvent. No correlation of the decontaminated amount of EtG and the extracted hair EtG was observed. Further experimental studies are necessary to investigate if the observed easily removable fraction of EtG is associated with external contamination and if analysis of wash solutions could be helpful for identifying external contamination in hair testing for ethyl glucuronide.

U2 - 10.1002/dta.2791

DO - 10.1002/dta.2791

M3 - SCORING: Journal article

C2 - 32171047

VL - 12

SP - 948

EP - 956

JO - DRUG TEST ANAL

JF - DRUG TEST ANAL

SN - 1942-7603

IS - 7

ER -