Abstract
Corticoids have found their way into the globe of sports, due to their anti-inflammatory properties, and have often found to be added to dietary supplements for illegally improving the effectiveness of their products. Earlier studies describe the detection of corticoids in several matrices, but this can be an incessant and continuous process as long because the doping practices continue. In this study, we report a technique to verify concurrently 44 of the foremost commonly abused synthetic corticoids (including chiral analogs) in equine plasma supported chiral liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. Polysaccharide i-cellulose-5 column was used for chromatographic separation with a gradient mode. The validation studies were also meted out by using equine plasma so as to judge the suitability of the strategy. Detection limits were determined between 0.01 and 0.05 ng/mL and therefore the limit of quantification was between 0.1 and 0.5 ng/mL. Recovery and matrix effect on the analytes was further assessed. Since the developed method was ready to separate the corticoids and to differentiate chiral analogs at very low levels (in picograms), this separation techniques may be employed for the determination (confirmatory analysis) of the corticoids in the forensic and anti-doping application.