Prevalence study of drugs and new psychoactive substances in hair of ketamine consumers using a methanolic direct extraction prior to high-resolution mass spectrometry.
Forensic science international – December 01, 2021
Source: PubMed
Summary
Ten individuals positive for the arylcyclohexylamine Ketamine, a common hallucinogen, also consumed other new psychoactive substances (NPS). Reanalyzing their hair samples using high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) with an incubation methanolic extraction revealed widespread polyconsumption. This advanced Orbitrap technology detected additional arylcyclohexylamines and Cathinones, like deschloroketamine and methylmetcathinone, in all 10 cases. This highlights a significant trend: Ketamine users frequently engage in broader NPS use, providing crucial insights into substance prevalence beyond initial screenings.
Abstract
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.