Hi Adolfo,

Thanks for your question, do you only have access to a single quadrupole detector?

Theoretically there is nothing stopping you from being able to detect the catecholamines by MS only, the biggest difference would be the fragment ion generated in MS/MS would help ensure that you are looking at the analyte of interest.

If you only have access to a single quadrupole, I would suggest using HPLC-FLR-MS. This way you would have secondary confirmation that the peak is correctly identified and contains the expected m/z for each analyte and ensures that you have chromatographic separation of each catecholamine. With that in mind, I have supplied a couple of papers which may help with the method development for this.

HPLC-FLR:

Article Determination of catecholamines and related compounds in mou...

Below paper should help with expected m/z:

Article LC–MS/MS Determination of Catecholamines in Urine Using FMOC...

Hopefully this helps

Hi Marc, yes, we only have a single detector

Hi Adolfo,

In that case if you only have access to a single quadrupole detector. I would recommend optimising the extraction process to remove any possible interference and selectively elute the catecholamines. Such as the kit below:

https://www.affinisep.com/products/ready-to-use-kits-spe-and-mips/catecholamines/

I would then make a series of reference standards that increase in concentration and inject from weakest to strongest to verify that you can observe the peak(s) of interest and determine your limit of detection (LOD) and Limit of quantification (LOQ).

There will be some limitations for the technique but you should be able to produce a method to monitor the various levels of catecholamines.

I hope this helps

Dear Marc, very helpful!