Abstract
A sensitive and reliable method is described for the determination of 1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-β-carboline and 1-methyl-1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-β-carboline in human urine, based on selected ion monitoring gas chromatography mass spectrometry coupled with use of deuterated analogues as internal standards. These compounds were extracted from a urine sample with ethyl acetate after pretreatment with fluorescamine and converted to trifluoroacetyl derivatives. The derivatives were separated by capillary gas chromatography and monitored by selected ion monitoring. For quantitation, the base peaks corresponding to each molecular ion were used as monitoring ions. The method developed in this work was used not only for the determination of 1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-β-carboline and 1-methyl-1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-β-carboline in human urine samples of healthy persons but also for a basic investigation of their in vivo metabolism using a deuterium labeled compound.
