Analysis of heterocyclic amines in meat products by liquid chromatography e Tandem mass spectrometry

Analysis of heterocyclic amines in meat products by liquid chromatography e Tandem mass spectrometry

Heterocyclic amines (HCAs), a class made up of more than 25 compounds, are unintendedhazardous substances that are generated by the heating or processing of proteinaceousfoods at high temperatures. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) hasclassified four such HCAs (IQ, MeIQ, MeIQx, and PhIP) as being probable or possible humancarcinogens. In this study, two sample preparation strategies, liquideliquid extraction (LLE)with solid-phase extraction (SPE) and a rapid, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safeextraction (QuEChERS) method, were investigated for the determination of 11 types ofHCAs in meat products by LC-MS/MS. The HCAs in the samples were first extracted withacetonitrile by LLE, and followed by SPE. In the case of QuEChERS extraction, acetonitrile isused as the LLME solvent, and PSA, C18EC and MgSO4 were used as the dSPE sorbent. Bothmethods showed good performance with respect to precision (RSD < 15.15%), accuracy(79.80e117.64%), recovery (52.39e116.88%), limit of quantitation for a spiked meat extract(0.01e10 ppb) and correlation coefficients (>0.993). The QuEChERS extraction strategyprovided a better linear dynamic range and superior sensitivity in comparison with theLLE-SPE approach. HCAs were successfully quantified in real samples using the two proposedapproaches by LC-MS/MS.