Screening for pesticides in serum from acutely poisoned patients by HPLC-photo-diode array detection

A simple and highly reliable screening method for unknown toxic substances in biological samples is required to select effective treatments for intoxicated patients in emergency medical care. For toxicological screening, and analytical method for pesticides in human serum by reversed-phase liquid chromatography with photo-diode-array detection was investigated. Twenty six commonly used pesticides could be identified from their UV spectra and retention times. The detection limit was less than 10 ng per injection, which was enough to identify pesticides in serum after solid-phase extraction using an ODS cartridge (Bond Elute C18). We analyzed the sera of three patients with this method and showed that the method was accurate and sensitive enough to identify unknown pesticides. The time needed for analysis was only 2-2.5h. We propose that this method will be very useful for detecting pesticides responsible for poisoning in emergency medical units.