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Rapid and Simple Procedure for the Determination of Cathinones, Amphetamine-Like Stimulants and Other New Psychoactive Substances in Blood and Urine by GC-MS

Rapid and Simple Procedure for the Determination of Cathinones, Amphetamine-Like Stimulants and Other New Psychoactive Substances in Blood and Urine by GC-MS

Gilbert Mercieca, Sara Odoardi, Marisa Cassar, Sabina Strano Rossi

J Pharm Biomed Anal. 2018 Feb 5;149:494-501.

PMID: 29175556

Abstract:

In the last few years an increasing number of new psychoactive substances (NPS), with different chemical structures (of which 37% are stimulants), have been released into the illicit drug market. Their detection and identification in biological samples is hence of great concern. The aim of this work was to develop a high-throughput and rapid method for the determination of different classes of stimulants (amphetamine-type stimulants, cathinones, phenethylamines and ketamine analogues) from blood and urine samples using GC-MS. The proposed method allows the almost simultaneous derivatization and extraction of analytes from biological samples in a very short time, by using hexyl chloroformate as derivatization agent. The extraction of analytes was performed by Dispersive Liquid Liquid Microextraction (DLLME), a very rapid, cheap and efficient extraction technique that employs microliter amounts of organic solvents. The chromatographic method allowed for the separation of 26 stimulants including positional isomers (3-MMC and 4-MMC). The method was validated on urine and blood samples with the ability to detect and quantify all analytes with satisfactory limits of detection (LODs) ranging between 1 and 10ng/mL, limits of quantification (LOQs) between 2 and 50ng/mL, selectivity and linearity (5-1000ng/mL). The method was then applied to real samples from forensic cases, demonstrating its suitability for the screening of a wide number of stimulants in biological specimens.

Chemicals Related in the Paper:

Catalog Number	Product Name	Structure	CAS Number	Price
AP6092542	Hexyl chloroformate		6092-54-2	Price

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