Development of a Direct Dilution Method for Simultaneous Determination of 40 Metal and Non-Metallic Elements in Urine and Blood Samples within 6 Minutes Using Icp-Ms: Comprehensive Biomonitoring of Elementomic Phenotypes in Paired Biological Samples

Abstract

The imbalance of metal and non-metallic elements in the human body can harm health, necessitating the determination of all chemical elements for health risk assessment. In this study, a simple and accurate bio-monitoring approach was developed for quantifying 40 elements in biological samples within 6 minutes using a direct dilution method combined with ICP-MS. This method exhibited good linearity (R2≥0.999) and high sensitivity (LOD as low as 2 ng/L). Recovery rates for spiked samples were 80-115% for serum and 81.92-107.18% for urine, with precision under 10%. The method was applied to samples from 202 Chinese children, showing 100% detection rates for essential elements like Li, Zn, and Mo in urine, and Fe, Cu, and Ba in serum. Heavy metals like Al were more frequently detected in serum, while Pb and Cd in urine. Rare earth elements showed high detection rates, particularly Sc and Ce. At the same time, which elements are more suitable for detection in which biological samples is deduced by analyzing pairing samples.These results demonstrated that the proposed method for analysis of paired biological samples provides an alternative quantitative elementomics method to enable the comprehensive assessment of health risk associated with elemental phenotypes of individuals.

Note:
Funding Information: This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.82241089), the National Key Research and Development Program of China [2023YFF1104800, 2017YFC1600500], Food Safety Risk Assessment project of Shanghai in China (RA-2023-17) and Scientific Research Foundation of Shanghai Pudong New Area Commission of Health and Family Planning (PW2017A-13).

Conflict of Interests: All authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethical Approval: According to Notice of Action Fudan University School of Public Health institutional Review Board, the IRB Approval Number is IRB#2022-TYSQ-10-203.

Keywords: Metal elements, Non-metallic elements, Biomonitoring, ICP-MS, Urine, Serum