Evaluation of strong cation-exchange polymers for the determination of drugs by solid-phase extraction-liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

Identifier:  PC:749

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/PC749

Authors:  Fontanals, N.; Miralles, N.; Abdullah, N.; Davies, A.; Gilart, N.; Cormack, P.A.G.

Abstract:
This paper presents eight distinct strong cation-exchange resins, all of which were derived from precursor resins that had been synthesised using either precipitation polymerisation or non-aqueous dispersion polymerisation. The precursor resins were transformed into the corresponding strong cation-exchange resins by hypercrosslinking followed by polymer analogous reactions, to yield materials with high specific surface areas and strong cation-exchange character. These novel resins were then evaluated as strong cation-exchange (SCX) sorbents in the solid-phase extraction (SPE) of a group of drugs from aqueous samples. Following preliminary experiments, the two best-performing resins were then evaluated in solid-phase extraction¿liquid chromatography¿tandem mass spectrometry (SPE/LC¿MS/MS) to determine a group of drugs from sewage samples. In general, use of these sorbents led to excellent recovery values (75¿100%) for most of the target drugs and negligible matrix effects (ME) (<20% ion suppression/enhancement of the analyte signal), when 50 mL and 25 mL of effluent and influent sewage water samples, respectively, were percolated through the resins. Finally, a validated method based on SPE/LC¿MS/MS was used to quantify the target drugs present in different sewage samples.