UHPLC-HRMS determination of some human growth hormone-releasing peptides in urine

Wide dissemination of growth hormone-releasing peptides for professional athletes as well as in amateur sports requires constant attention from the law enforcement agencies. However, in addition to examining the seized materials to establish their active components, it is advisable and necessary to control the growth hormone-releasing peptides in the urine at the trace concentration level since the effective doses of the use of growth hormone-releasing peptides are relatively low  and the rate of their excretion from the body often does not allow the determination of native compounds and their metabolites even a few days after the administration. A procedure for the measurement of some growth hormone-releasing peptides in the urine using the ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) in combination with the high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) has been proposed. It was found that the highest sensitivity could be achieved by utilizing the mobile phase consisting of 0.1% solution of trifluoroacetic acid in water and acetonitrile acidified with trifluoroacetic acid (0.1%). The concentration factor using the solid-phase extraction has been established. As it could be seen from the presented data, the highest extraction efficiency was achieved using the cation-exchange sorbents, while the octadecyl sorbent, in fact, was ineffective in this case. The matrix effects were noted not to exceed 15% during the research. The use of HRMS allows for high sensitivity due to the selectivity of the method. Keywords : UHPLC-HRMS, releasing-peptides, doping, mass-spectrometry (Russian)  DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15826/analitika.2019.23.4.008 A.Z. Temerdashev 1 , E.V. Dmitrieva 1 , A.A. Azaryan 1 , D.A. Burmikin 2 1 Kuban State University, Stavropolskaya st., 149, Krasnodar, 350055, Russian Federation 2 Bruker Ltd., Pyatnitskaya st., 50/2, Moscow, 119017, Russian Federation