The application of Ultrafast LCMS to optimizing detection in the analysis of tramadol and its metabolites

The detection of drug residues in samples such as urine is often limited by the extent of metabolism of the parent drug, the structural relationships between parent and metabolite and the availability of standards of the metabolites. Method optimization in such cases is limited by the need to extract the residues from urine and carry out repeated analyses to determine the best fragmentation conditions or alternatively base detection on the fragmentation conditions derived for the parent compound. We describe an Ultrafast LCMS approach to the optimising of CID energies based on the analysis of urine specimens containing metabolites of tramadol.