Prevalence study of drugs and new psychoactive substances in hair of ketamine consumers using a methanolic direct extraction prior to high-resolution mass spectrometry

Few studies have reported the prevalence or incidence about the consumption of new psychoactive substances (NPS). The hair analysis can be useful for this purpose. At the present, ketamine is the most consumed arylcyclohexylamine associated to young consumers and polyconsumption profiles. For this r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Forensic science international 2021-12, Vol.329, p.111080, Article 111080
Main Authors: Matey, J.M., Montalvo, Gemma, García-Ruiz, Carmen, Zapata, Félix, López-Fernández, Adrián, Martínez, Maria A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amphetamines
Arylcyclohexylamine
Cathinone
Chromatography
Cocaine
Consumers
Consumption
Cross-Sectional Studies
Drugs
Ecstasy
Forensic chemistry
Forensic science
Forensic sciences
Gas chromatography
Hair
Hair - chemistry
Hallucinogen
High resolution
High-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS)
Incubation methanolic
Ketamine
Laboratories
Mass spectrometry
Mass spectroscopy
Metabolites
Methanol
New psychoactive substance (NPS)
Orbitrap
Pharmaceutical Preparations
Psychotropic Drugs
Public health
Scientific imaging
Spectroscopy
Substance Abuse Detection
Tandem Mass Spectrometry
Toxicology
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Summary:Few studies have reported the prevalence or incidence about the consumption of new psychoactive substances (NPS). The hair analysis can be useful for this purpose. At the present, ketamine is the most consumed arylcyclohexylamine associated to young consumers and polyconsumption profiles. For this reason, ketamine consumer cases become very interesting to provide information on NPS prevalence. In this work, ten former cases of the National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Science (INTCF) of Madrid Department (INTCFM), all of them belonging to defendants accused of crimes against public health and who had been found positive to ketamine, were reassessed. At the first toxicological analysis of those hair samples, a positive consume in ketamine had been determined by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS). In this work, the same hair samples were reanalyzed by high-resolution mass spectrometry ( UHPLC-HRMS/MS) using an incubation methanolic extraction combined with a single, simpler, non-selective and direct sample pre-treatment. After corroborating the GC-MS results previously obtained for the same samples, the detection of additional NPS using this new methodology evidenced its benefits and opened the possibility to perform a NPS prevalence study. In brief, in those cases with a positive consumption in ketamine, a polyconsumption of other drugs and NPS was found, including different arylcyclohexylamines as deschloroketamine, 3-MeO-PCP and methoxetamine; and cathinones as methylmetcathinone and N-ethyl-pentylone. [Display omitted] •The prevalence of the consumption of NPS were evaluated in several ketamine consumers.•Non-selective universal incubation and extraction methods were applied for hair analysis prior to LC-HRMS/MS.•Consumers of ketamine showed poly-consumption of amphetamine-like drugs and hallucinogens.•Consumption of arylcyclohexylamine-type and cathinone-type NPS was detected.
ISSN:0379-0738
1872-6283
DOI:10.1016/j.forsciint.2021.111080