Abstract

Bilal Yilmaz¹*, Vedat Akba² and Murat Cavus²

A simple and sensitive gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method for determination of heroin and its metabolite (morphine) in human plasma was developed and validated. Medazepam was used as an internal standard (IS). The calibration curves were linear (r = 0.99) over heroin and morphine concentrations ranging from 10 to 200 ng mL-1 and 7.5-300 ng mL-1, respectively. The method had an accuracy of >95% and intra- and inter-day precision (RSD%) of ≤ 4.83% and ≤4.68% for heroin and morphine, respectively. The extraction recoveries were found to be 97.63 ± 1.21 and 96.33 ± 1.66% for heroin and morphine, respectively. The limit of quantification (LOQ) using 1 mL human plasma was 10 ng mL-1 for heroin and 7.5 ng mL-1 for morphine. Stability studies showed that heroin and morphine were stable in human plasma after 8 h incubation at room temperature or after 1 week storage at -20 0C with three freze-thaw cycles.

Heroin; Morphine; GC-MS; Liquid-liquid extraction; Validation.

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