현재 복어독의 표준 시험법은 다른 나라들과 마찬가지로 마우스를 이용한 동물시험법으로 명시되어 있다. 그러나, 살아있는 동물에게 고통을 주는 동물실험의 규제 확대로 인해 기기분석 시험법으로의 개선이 요구되고 있다. 또한, 동물시험법의 감도나 정밀성 및 정확성의 한계로 최근에 동물시험법을 대체할 수 있는 시험법에 대한 연구가 활발히 진행되고 있다. 본 연구에서 LC/MS/MS 시험법은 시료에서 테트로도톡신을 추출한 후 SPE(Solid phase extraction) 정제칼럼을 이용하여 정제하고 양이온 모드에서 MRM(multiple reaction monitoring)방법으로 분석하는 시험법으로서 밸리데이션 결과 검출한계(LOD)는 부위에 따라 $0.03{sim}0.08{mu}g/g$이었고, 정량한계(LOQ)는 $0.10{sim}0.25{mu}g/g$이었다. 검량선의 상관계수($r^2$)는 0.9986~0.9997이고, 회수율은 80.9%~103.0%이었으며 상대표준편차(RSD)는 4.3%~13.0%로서 적합한 시험법임을 확인하였다. 이 시험법을 이용하여 복어 검체의 부위별로 분석을 실시하였으며, 동물시험법의 시험결과와의 상관관계를 분석한 결과, 상관계수는 0.95이상의 상관성을 확인하였다.
The current standard for testing tetrodotoxin (TTX) in foodstuffs is the mouse bioassay (MBA) in Korea as in many other countries. However, this test suffers from potential ethical concerns over the use of live animals. In addition, the mouse bioassay does not test for a specific toxin thus a sample resulting in mouse incapacitation would need further confirmatory testing to determine the exact source toxin (e.g., TTX, STX, brevotoxin, etc.). Furthermore, though the time of death is proportional to toxicity in this assay, the dynamic range for this proportional relationship is small thus many samples must be diluted and new mice be injected to yield a result that falls within the quantitative dynamic range. Therefore, in recent years, there have been many efforts in this field to develop alternative assays. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with mass spectrometry (MS) has been emerged as one of the most promising options. A LC-MS-MS method involves solid-phase extraction (SPE) and followed by analysis using an electrospray in the positive ionization mode and multiple reactions monitoring (MRM). To adopt LC-MS-MS method as alternative standard for testing TTX, we performed a validation study for the quantification of TTX in puffer fish. This LC-MS-MS method showed good sensitivity as limits of detection (LOD) of $0.03{sim}0.08{mu}g/g$ and limits of quantification (LOQ) of $0.10{sim}0.25{mu}g/g$. The linearity ($r^2$) of tetrodotoxin were 0.9986~0.9997, the recovery were 80.9~103.0% and the relative standard deviations (RSD) were 4.3~13.0%. The correlation coefficient between the mouse bioassay and LC/MS/MS method was higher than 0.95.
