The quantitation of triazolam in postmortem blood by gas chromatography/negative ion chemical ionization mass spectrometry

A specific and sensitive assay has been developed to quantitate triazolam in postmortem blood using 2He-triazoiam as an internal standard. Triazolam is isolated from whole blood by adsorption on an Amberlite | XAD-2 resin and subsequent elution with an organic solvent, The extract is analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectometry using selected ion monitoring (GC/MS/SIM) in the negative chemical ionization mode (C I-). The procedure is presently being used in case work and the results from 36 cases are presented, In t roduct ion Triazolam is used clinically as nanxiolitic and hypnotic agent (1). In combination with ethanol it induces psychomotor im-pairment (2). The detection a d quantitatiou of this drug can be difficult. The dosage is low resulting in blood concentrations in the ng/mL range and extraction i to acid is very limited making clean-up of an extract from putrefied samples challenging. The applica-tion of XAD type resins in analytical toxicology is well recog-nized; they can be particularly useful when standard extraction techniques no longer apply (3-5). XAD-7 has been demonstrated to be useful for the purification of extracted benzodiazepines, including triazolam, from blood (6). A number of methods have been published for the quantita-tion of triazolam in blood, serum, or plasma. At present, the preferred method appears to be gas chromatography with elec-tron capture detection (7,8), although liquid chromatography (9) and polarography (10) have been employed. The use of gas chromatography/mass spectrometry/selected ion monitoring (GC/MS/SIM) in the negative chemical onization mode (CL-using estazolam as an internal standard hasbeen use d present analysis of triazolam in serum (11). The MS/SIM/CI- method using deuterated internal standard has been applied to the analysis of diazepam and flurazepam in serum (12-13)