Validation of an analytical methodology to determine polychlorinated biphenyls in samples from blood plasma

• Published in: Biomédica
• Main Authors: Boris Santiago Ávila, Carolina Ramírez
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; Spanish
• Published: Instituto Nacional de Salud 2017
• Subjects: Polychlorinated biphenyls; blood; plasma; chromatography; gas; mass spectrometry; chemistry; analytical; Medicine; R; Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.7705/biomedica.v37i4.3529; https://doaj.org/article/3a4bff7d55b14ddcba213d1099570d41

Introduction: Polychlorinated biphenyls are among the five most toxic persistent contaminants for living organisms according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). Objective: To standardize and validate an analytical method to determine and quantify polychlorinated biphenyl indicators in samples from blood plasma by means of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Materials and methods: We fortified a plasma pool to do the matrix assays. Additionally, we used the NIST SRM® 1958 reference material for the veracity and intermediate accuracy assays. Results: Methodology recovery percentages ranged between 88.4 and 97.5%, and the bias was less than 20%. Detection and quantification limits were 0.04 μg/L and 0.10 μg/L, respectively, for all polychlorinated biphenyl indicators. The linearity represented by the determination coefficient (R2) varied between 0.9866 and 0.9886. Accuracy, expressed as relative standard deviation was less than 20% in all the linear work range (0.5-500 μg/L). Finally, we analyzed 115 samples from Colombian population in various zones of the country and we found 65 positive samples, from which two samples were above HBM-II (7.0 μg/L, 2XΣPCB 138, 153, 180), and two, above HBM-I (3.5 μg/L, 2XΣPCB 138, 153, 180). Conclusion: The method we developed is accurate for PCB analysis in blood plasma samples and could be used for biological surveillance of these contaminants in the Colombian population