Semi-targeted residue screening in complex matrices with liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry: current possibilities and limitations

Abstract

Some twenty cultured fish samples were analyzed for possible residues of veterinary drugs with high resolution mass spectrometry (single stage Orbitrap) coupled to ultra performance liquid chromatography. Quantitative analysis based on external standards covered 110 analytes. Some 116 additional compounds were monitored without having access to reference materials. Detection was based on calculated exact masses and narrow mass windows. Furthermore, a number of semi-targeted techniques were evaluated and compared to corresponding triple quadrupole precursor scan experiments. Single stage high resolution mass spectrometry was used to monitor compound specific product ions (without relying on a previous precursor selection). The capabilities of neutral loss searches based on exact masses were shown by detecting small concentrations of incurred oxytetracycline residues. High resolution mass spectrometry provided more sensitivity and selectivity than corresponding tandem quadrupole precursor and neutral loss scans. The currently limiting factor is the not adequate performance of the available software used for data mining. The high number of false positives that were produced, when searching for chlorine isotopic patterns, was clearly linked to the fact that the utilized software does not perform a peak deconvolution, but simply investigates one individual spectrum after another.