A simple and fast liquid–liquid extraction method for the determination of 2,2′,4,4′,5,5′-hexachlorobiphenyl (CB-153) and 1,1-dichloro-2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)-ethylene (p,p′-DDE) from human serum for epidemiological studies on type 2 diabetes

A simple and fast method is presented to be used for example in studies on the relationship between serum levels of persistent organic pollutants and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Method is based on liquid–liquid extraction and gas chromatography coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry. In the sample pre-treatment special attention was paid to minimize the number of sample manipulation steps and the amounts of organic solvents needed. Compounds analyzed were 2,2′,4,4′,5,5′-hexachlorobiphenyl (PCB-153) and 1,1-dichloro-2,2-bis (p-chlorophenyl)-ethylene (p,p′-DDE), the major metabolite of DDT. The method included extraction and cleanup of 0.2 ml of serum in a single test tube and subsequent analysis of the extract from 0.2 ml final volume. Validation was conducted to explore the performance of the method. The limits of detection for p,p′-DDE and PCB-153 based on the standard deviation of the blank samples were 4.3 and 3.1 pg/ml, respectively. Repeatability was less than 2.5% at three concentration levels tested and recovery from Certified Reference Material SRM 1589a was 84% for p,p′-DDE and 87% for PCB-153 of the certified values, respectively. Serum samples from the AMAP intercalibration round 2008-2 were also analyzed, and results were 101–116% of the assigned values. The presented method was used for an epidemiological study with more than 700 serum samples from a type 2 diabetes cohort from Sweden.