TITLE:
Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry Assay to Detect Ethyl Glucuronide in Human Fingernail: Comparison to Hair and Gender Differences
AUTHORS:
Joseph Jones, Mary Jones, Charles Plate, Douglas Lewis, Michael Fendrich, Lisa Berger, Daniel Fuhrmann
KEYWORDS:
Alcohol; Biomarkers; Liquid Chromatography-Tandem mass Spectrometry; LC-MS/MS; Ethyl Glucuronide; Fingernail; Hair
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Analytical Chemistry,
Vol.3 No.1,
January
5,
2012
ABSTRACT: Over the past decade, the use of hair specimens for the long-term detection of the alcohol biomarker ethyl glucuronide has been increasing in popularity and usage. We evaluated the usefulness of fingernail clippings as a suitable alterna-tive to hair for ethyl glucuronide detection. A liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method for the detection of ethyl glucuronide in fingernail clippings was fully validated and used to analyze the hair and/or fingernail specimens of 606 college-aged study participants. The limit of detection was 2 pg/mg, the limit of quantitation was 8 pg/mg and the method was linear from 8 to 2000 pg/mg. Intra- and inter-assay imprecision studies at three different concentrations (20, 40, 200 pg/mg) were all within 7.8% and all intra- and inter-assay bias studies at these levels were within 115.1% of target concentration. Ethyl glucuronide levels in fingernail (mean = 29.1 ± 55.6 pg/mg) were higher than ethyl glucuronide levels in hair (mean = 9.48 ± 22.3 pg/mg) and a correlation of the matched pairs was observed (r = 0.552, P