Bioanalysis 2012-07-01

Determination of dimethyltryptamine and β-carbolines (ayahuasca alkaloids) in plasma samples by LC-MS/MS.

Carolina Dizioli Rodrigues Oliveira, Guilherme Gonçalves Okai, José Luiz da Costa, Rafael Menck de Almeida, Diogo Oliveira-Silva, Mauricio Yonamine

Index: Bioanalysis 4(14) , 1731-8, (2012)

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Abstract

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive plant beverage originally used by indigenous people throughout the Amazon Basin, long before its modern use by syncretic religious groups established in Brazil, the USA and European countries. The objective of this study was to develop a method for quantification of dimethyltryptamine and β-carbolines in human plasma samples.The analytes were extracted by means of C18 cartridges and injected into LC-MS/MS, operated in positive ion mode and multiple reaction monitoring. The LOQs obtained for all analytes were below 0.5 ng/ml. By using the weighted least squares linear regression, the accuracy of the analytical method was improved at the lower end of the calibration curve (from 0.5 to 100 ng/ml; r(2)> 0.98).The method proved to be simple, rapid and useful to estimate administered doses for further pharmacological and toxicological investigations of ayahuasca exposure.