A reliable and sensitive LCMS-IT-TOF method coupled with accelerated solvent extraction for the identification and quantitation of six typical heterocyclic aromatic amines in cooked meat products

A reliable and sensitive liquid chromatography-ion trap-time of flight tandem mass spectrometric assay (LCMS-IT-TOF) coupled with accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) was developed to identify and quantify six typical heterocyclic aromatic amines (HCAs), including 2-amino-3-methylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoline (IQ), 2-amino-3,4-dimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoline (MeIQ), 2-amino-3,8-dimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline (MeIQx), 2-amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo[4,5-b]pyridine (PhIP), 2-amino-9H-pyrido[2,3-b]indole (AαC) and 2-amino-3-methyl-9H-pyrido[2,3-b]indole (MeAαC) in cooked meat products. The effects of various experimental factors on separation and detection were investigated, and the fragmentation patterns of six HCAs were discussed. The method has shown high reproducibility with intra-day and inter-day precision (RSD, %) less than 6.16% across three quality control levels for the six analytes. The assay was linear over the concentration range of 10 to 1000 μg L⁻¹ for IQ, MeIQ and 5 to 500 μg L⁻¹ for MeIQx, PhIP, AαC and MeAαC (r² ≥ 0.996). The experimental results showed that the proposed method can be used successfully to identify and determine six typical HCAs at ultra-trace levels (μg kg⁻¹) in cooked meat products.