Biosafety Level 2 cabinet UV-C light exposure of sports antidoping human urine samples does not affect the stability of selected prohibited substances.

The current study examined the stability of several antidoping prohibited substances analytes in urine after 15-min exposure to UV-C light in a Biosafety Level 2 cabinet. The urine matrices were exposed within the original antidoping bottles with the aim to destroy DNA/RNA and possible SARS CoV-2. The analytes small molecules Phase I and Phase II metabolites and peptides, in total 444, endogenous, internal standards, and prohibited substances, pH, and specific gravity in urine were studied. The accredited analytical methods were used by Anti-Doping Laboratory Qatar for the comparison of data of the same urine samples analyzed with and without UV-C exposure. In the study conditions, no problems of stability were detected in the substances spiked in the urine samples exposed in the UV-C irradiation.

Ultra-fast retroactive processing of liquid chromatography high-resolution full-scan Orbitrap mass spectrometry data in anti-doping screening of human urine.

RATIONALE: Retroactive analysis of previously tested urine samples has become an important sports anti-doping tool. Retroactive reprocessing of old data files acquired from a generic screening procedure can reveal detection of initially unknown substances, like illegal drugs and newly identified metabolites. METHODS: To be able to efficiently search through hundreds to thousands of liquid chromatography high-resolution full-scan Orbitrap mass spectrometry data files of anti-doping samples, a combination of MetAlign and HR_MS_Search software has been developed. MetAlign reduced the data size ca 100-fold making possible local storage of a massive volume of data. RESULTS: The newly developed HR_MS_Search module can search through the reduced data files for new compounds (mass or isotope pattern) defined by mass windows and retention time windows. A search for 33 analytes in 940 reduced data files lasted 10 s. The output of the automatic search was compared to the standard manual routine evaluation. The results of searching were evaluated in terms of false negatives and false positives. The newly banned b2-agonist higenamine and its metabolite coclaurine were successfully searched in reduced data files originating from a testing period for which these substances were not banned, as an example of retroactive analysis. CONCLUSIONS: The freeware MetAlign software and its automatic searching module HR_MS_Search facilitated the retroactive reprocessing of reduced full-scan high-resolution liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry screening data files and created a new tool in anti-doping laboratories' network.