Development and application of hyphenated mass spectrometry techniques for drug analysis in human hair

Barker, James, Deshmukh, Nawed I.K., Shah, Syeda A.B., Archer, Roland, Breidi, Salah E., Petroczi, Andrea, Cross, Paul and Naughton, Declan (2013) Development and application of hyphenated mass spectrometry techniques for drug analysis in human hair. In: BIT’s 11th Annual Congress of International Drug Discovery Science & Technology 2013; 13-16 Nov 2013, Haikou, China. (Unpublished)

Abstract

Recent abuse of designer drugs such as mephedrone has presented a requirement for the introduction of sensitive, reliable and reproducible methods for the long-term detection of these controlled drugs in different matrices. Hair analysis can provide information on the prior use of drugs. The initial study focuses on the development of a validated LC-MS/MS method for the quantitative analysis of mephedrone. Five out of 154 hair samples were confirmed to be positive for mephedrone. The second study focuses on the development of a method for the analysis of two recreational drugs, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC) and cocaine in hair samples using GC-MS, without prior derivatisation. Ten hair samples were enzymatically digested, extracted, and then analysed by GC-MS. All samples measured contained Δ9-THC and one sample contained cocaine. The ease of direct analysis by GCMS, lower detection limits of underivatised samples, and the stability of drugs using this technique may offer an improved method analysis.

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