A Review On The Advancements In The Field Of Mercapturic Acids And The Development Of An Ultra-High-Performance Liquid Chromatography High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry Approach For Profiling Urinary Mercapturic Acids

Abstract

The exposure to mercapturic acid precursors contributes to several reported human health effects. These electrophilic highly reactive precursors undergo several metabolic steps for detoxification and excretion as a mercapturic acid. Liquid chromatography coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry is a technique recently used for the screening of these metabolites in biofluids since it allows detection with high confidence and mass accuracy. In this work, a novel UHPLC-HRMS nanoflow method was developed aiming to screen for mercapturic acids using a data-dependent untargeted approach, to combine the detection of known MAs with the potential identification of previously unknown ones. The method was optimized using a standard mixture of MAs typically found to be elevated in cigarette smokers and it was tested on urine samples from smokers and nonsmokers. The analysis allowed the detection of 316 putative MA signatures and differences in the profiles of MAs were observed when comparing the two groups.