Validation of a New Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry Ion-Trap Technique for the Simultaneous Determination of Thirteen Anticoagulant Rodenticides, Drugs, or Natural Products

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method for the identification and quantification of anticoagulant (anti-vitamin K or AVK) compounds, including rodenticides, drugs, and natural products because no published method could be found. The proposed method is based on ion-trap technology with electrospray ionization (ESI) and multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) technique. Each AVK is identified by means of its retention time, precursor ion, and two product ions. Plasma samples are extracted by liquid-liquid partition on Toxi-tube B®. The method was validated on dog plasma and gave good results in terms of specificity, linearity, and percent recovery for the 14 AVK tested (warfarin, acenocoumarol, bromadiolone, brodifacoum, chlorophacinone, coumatetralyl, dicoumarol, difenacoum, difethialone, flocoumafen, fluindione, phenindione, and tioclomarol). The limits of detection ranged from 5 to 25 ng/mL. Intraday repeatability was good, but interday repeatability was more variable though still sufficient for our diagnostic purposes. The technique was successfully applied in a series of clinical investigations to demonstrate its applicability in various animal species and gave very high sensitivity and specificity results.