rDetermination of Triazolam by AccuTOF™ GC/Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry [GC-TOFMS Application]

Triazolam is a benzodiazepine with a very short elimination half-life. The range is reported to be 1.5 to 5.5 hours1. Due to its frequent use as a sedative and its potential to affect human activities such as driving, an unambiguous and sensitive analysis method is needed for its identification and quantitation. Generally, for determination of triazolam, screen tests are performed in biological samples followed by confirmation and quantitation with GC/MS 2. Here, we demonstrate the feasibility by using the JEOL AccuTOF™ GC, time-of-flight mass spectrometer with accurate mass measurement and negative ion chemical ionization (NCI) capabilities for triazolam determination. D4-triazolam was used as internal standard. The mass accuracy without internal reference is smaller than 2 mmu. The limit of detection is 5 ng/mL. The quantitation standard curve can be linear from 5 ng/mL to 1000 ng/mL with R2 of 0.9992. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that triazolam has been detected by GC/time-of-flight mass spectrometry with accurate mass measurement.