High-performance liquid chromatography coupled to Orbitrap mass spectrometry for screening of common new psychoactive substances and other drugs in biological samples

The complexity of the drug market and the constant updating of drugs have been challenging issues for drug regulatory authorities. With the emergence of new psychoactive substances (NPS) and the nonmedical use of prescription drugs, forensic and toxicology laboratories have had to adopt new drug screening methods and advanced instrumentation. Using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with Orbitrap mass spectrometry, we developed a screening method for common NPS and other drugs. Two milliliters of mixed solvent of n-hexane and ethyl acetate (1:1, v:v) were added to 500 μL of blood or urine sample for liquid–liquid extraction, and methanol extraction was used for hair samples. The developed method was applied to 3897 samples (including 332 blood samples, 885 urine samples, and 2680 hair samples) taken from drug addicts in a province of China during 2019–2021. For urine and blood samples, the limits of detection (LODs) ranged from 1.68 pg/mL to 10.7 ng/mL. For hair samples, the LODs ranged from 3.30 × 10⁻⁵ to 4.21 × 10⁻³ ng/mg. The matrix effects of urine, blood, and hair samples were in the range of 47.6%–121%, 39.8%–139%, and 6.35%–118%, respectively. And the intra-day precision was 3.5%–6.0% and the inter-day precision was 4.18%–9.90%. Analysis of the actual samples showed an overall positive detection rate of 58.9%, with 5.32% of the samples indicating the use of multiple drugs.