LC–high-resolution multiple stage spectrometric analysis of diuretic compounds: Unusual mass fragmentation pathways

The analysis of diuretic compounds has become of great concern because of their extensive use both in therapy and in illicit treatments (such as masking agents in sport doping and drug abuse). The variety of chemical structures of this class of drugs encouraged the development of new methods and techniques of analysis, especially as regards to acidic compounds. LC/MS has so grown to be the reference technique for this kind of analysis in forensic and anti-doping confirmation purposes.Multiple stage MS permits identification of single drugs with high selectivity, but some unexpected pathways could weaken the entire process. In this work we aim to explain some unusual fragmentation steps using high-resolution MSn.For example, in the case of amiloride an intense product ion in MS3 analysis generates an apparent loss of 10 Da. Water adduct formation and successive carbon monoxide elimination can explain this uncommon behavior, which was studied using different ion traps.Bendroflumethiazide MSn spectra show instead three successive HF losses, in spite of the presence of a radical site in the parent structure.Homolytic cleavages with radical ion production occur also in the case of protonated positive ion of ethacrynic acid (loss of chlorine radical) showing that such fragmentation behavior is not so rare as generally reported.Different ionization modes were studied and a tentative correlation with acidic-base properties was done. Multiple stage high-resolution mass spectra of positive and negative ions were discussed.