1. Analysis of illicit glucocorticoid levels in camel hair using competitive ELISA – Comparison with LC–MS/MS
- Author
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Wesam El‐Gahany, S. Salman Ashraf, Iltaf Shah, Latifa Al‐Hajj, Ayisha Alraeesi, and Ayisha Al‐Maidalli
- Subjects
Drug ,Saliva ,Camelus ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Pharmaceutical Science ,Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay ,Urine ,Pharmacology ,01 natural sciences ,Analytical Chemistry ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Camel hair ,Tandem Mass Spectrometry ,Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry ,medicine ,Animals ,Environmental Chemistry ,030216 legal & forensic medicine ,Animal Fur ,education ,Glucocorticoids ,Spectroscopy ,media_common ,education.field_of_study ,Illicit Drugs ,business.industry ,010401 analytical chemistry ,0104 chemical sciences ,Substance Abuse Detection ,Methylprednisolone ,Female ,Flumethasone ,business ,Glucocorticoid ,Hair ,medicine.drug - Abstract
Accurate, sensitive, and rapid screening of performance-enhancing drugs, including glucocorticoids, is critical to combat doping in animal racing sports. Samples of urine, saliva, and serum are usually used for random screening of controlled substances; however, they tend to provide only acute usage and doping information. Hair testing has the potential to detect long-term drug use in racing animals. In the present study, commercially available ELISA-kits were used to rapidly screen and analyze various natural and synthetic glucocorticoids in the hair of camels. The four glucocorticoids that were screened using the competitive ELISA were hydrocortisone, dexamethasone, flumethasone, and methylprednisolone. However, comparison of the results obtained using the ELISA method with our previously published LC-MS/MS assay did not show a good correlation. The results obtained with the ELISA analysis of hair samples of 27 different camels showed that this technique consistently yielded significantly higher levels of glucocorticoids compared with the LC-MS/MS assay. This is an interesting finding and suggests that commercially available ELISA tests may overestimate the amount of glucocorticoids present in camel hair, perhaps due to specificity and cross-reactivity issues.
- Published
- 2020