Human breast milk is a biofluid produced by a woman’s body during pregnancy. Breast milk contains necessary nutrition to a growing infant as well as xenobiotics--including drugs of abuse-- consumed by the woman which diffuse into the breast milk from the bloodstream. Since breast milk is recommended to be part of all infants’ diets, being able to detect any toxic components--such as drugs--in the matrix is critical. However, despite the ease and noninvasive nature of collection, human breast milk is a difficult matrix to analyze due to its high fat and protein content. Thus far, no literature has been published on the analysis of breast milk through direct analysis in real time mass spectrometry (DART-MS). Adapting DART-MS to detect drugs of abuse in human breast milk will allow for quick and timely identification of drugs present in an individual’s breast milk, as well as aid in research regarding the potential harmful effects of drugs--both licit and illicit--on an infant who is breastfeeding. Forensically, this method could potentially allow toxicologists to use breast milk as a matrix to determine if drugs played a role in a woman’s or breastfed child’s death. Using both C18 biocompatible solid-phase microextraction (BIO-SPME) fibers and QuickStrip™ cards, a DART-MS method was developed to be able to detect drugs of abuse in human breast milk. Four drugs of abuse (cocaine, codeine, morphine, and delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC))--all of which are either commonly abused during the postpartum period or are of particular danger to breastfeeding women--were chosen to be studied. The drugs of abuse were extracted from either whole or pre-filtered human breast milk using either liquid-liquid extraction or C18 BIO-SPME fibers and detected with DART-MS using parameters suggested by IonSense, Incorporation (Inc.). Mass spectral results indicated that macromolecules in whole breast milk did not hinder extraction or detection and that a larger amount of the analytes were ionized/desorbed when using the BIO-SPME fibers. Thus, a BIO-SPME method adopted from IonSense, Inc. utilizing C18 fibers and SPME DART-MS parameters (with temperature and rail time adjustments) can be used to quickly detect cocaine, codeine, morphine, and Δ9-THC in human breast milk, indicating that this method may be used for the detection of other drugs of abuse in breast milk. In addition, BIO-SPME fibers can be used to quantify the concentration of cocaine in breast milk between a range of 50 and 200 nanograms per milliliter as demonstrated by a matrix-matched calibration curve created using various concentrations of cocaine. Despite its benefits, the BIO-SPME and DART method cannot be used on samples containing more than one drug of abuse (based upon the drug concentrations utilized in this study) due to competitive adsorption and competitive ionization, respectively, as not all drugs could be detected when this method was applied to breast milk samples containing numerous drugs.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/43747 |
| Date | 31 January 2022 |
| Creators | Woods, Emily Rae |
| Contributors | Hall, Adam B. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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