Biological monitoring of occupational exposure to 5-fluorouracil: Urinary α-fluoro-β-alanine assay by high performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry in health care personnel

A new sensitive and specific HPLC–MS/MS method for the determination of α-fluoro-β-alanine (FBAL), the main metabolite of the antineoplastic drug 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), in urine for the biological monitoring survey of health care workers exposed to 5-FU is described. This procedure is characterized by a pre-column FBAL derivatization by 2,4-dinitrofluorobenzene followed by solid phase extraction sample clean-up. The chromatographic separation was achieved by hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) on a ZIC HILIC column (Sequant) and the quantification was performed by tandem mass spectrometry. The method offers high sensitivity with a quantification limit of 1 μg/l, which is an improvement on those previously reported. The within- and between-day precisions were less than 13% and 15% respectively at the LOQ and no significant relative matrix effect was observed for FBAL. The validated method was applied to the biological monitoring of occupational exposure to 5-FU in a French hospital. Pre- and post-shift urine samples were collected from 19 workers in a hospital pharmacy and an oncology ward over a period of 5 days. On a total of 121 analysed samples, measurable amounts of FBAL were detected in up to 29%, the concentrations range from LOQ to 22.7 μg/l, yielding evidence of occupational exposure to 5-FU. Such data are scarce and represent a step forward in assessing the occupational health risks associated with handling antineoplastic drugs.