Matthias Grill

A fully automated method for the effective drug screening of large populations based on dried blood spot (DBS) technology is presented. DBSs were prepared, scanned, then spiked with deuterated standards, and directly extracted, before they were transferred online to an analytical liquid chromatography (LC) column and then to the electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (ESI-MS/MS) system. The method was applied to DBS samples from two patients with back pain; codeine and oxycodone could be identified and quantified accurately below the level of misuse of 89.6 ng/mL and 39.6 ng/mL, respectively.