30 ANALYTICAL AND LABORATORY EQUIPMENT
made to not only prevent the over-prescribing of legal opiate medications, but also curb doctor-shopping amongst patients, they have been offset by heroin’s re-emergence as a popular drug of abuse. Cheaper than prescription medications obtained illegally in addition to providing a better euphoria to users, heroin continues to contribute to the surge in cases of opiate overdose in emergency rooms. While the treatment of a classically presenting heroin overdose and subsequent toxicological analysis has become routine, more recently many emerging novel analgesics can be found in addition to or in place of heroin itself, adding substantial complexity to the testing. Fentanyl, first identified in overdose cases in the 1980s, is now joined by compounds such as W-18, W-15, furanyl fentanyl, carfentanil and U-47700 in seized preparations and/or toxicology screens and confirmations. Designer benzodiazepines
have also created a considerable challenge for toxicologists, specifically in European
100 mM acetic acid for novel analgesics and acetate buffer (pH 5) and methylene chloride for designer benzodiazepines. Previous extraction optimisation for traditional benzodiazepines identified basified ethyl acetate as the elution solvent of choice
countries. Many of the compounds being found in patient samples were once investigated to be used for pharmaceutical purposes. Black- market chemists have started to synthesise these drugs and often attempt to disguise them in pill form. Tese tablets can then either be wrongly marketed to customers as prescription-grade benzodiazepines or also be laced with other drugs of abuse. For the extraction of both designer benzodiazepines and novel opiate-like compounds, UCT’s Clean Screen XCEL I column can be put to use. Tis sorbent also eliminates the column preconditioning step while providing laboratories with a sample preparation solution for a wide variety of forensic matrices. Each method requires only two wash steps prior to elution: D.I. H2
O and
for this class of compounds; thus, it was utilised in this extraction protocol. On the contrary, the novel analgesics studied did not exhibit the expected recovery rates as their traditional opiate counterparts when a basified solution of methylene chloride and isopropyl alcohol was used as an extraction solvent. Methanol with 2% ammonium hydroxide was ultimately selected due to its ability to elute both classic and emerging opiate-like drugs of abuse without compromising the recoveries for either category.
Smarter extraction Te aforementioned SPE methods allow for toxicologists to extract and identify designer and novel substances without compromising the recoveries of traditional drugs of abuse within the same drug classes. Although there is no way to predict what modifications will be made to these base structures and what will subsequently be abused in the drug market, it is still possible for forensic labs to be as prepared as possible for both extraction and instrumental methodologies by implementing universal SPE approaches as described above.
The Selectra PFPP HPLC column plays a key role in the fight to identify new designer drugs
www.scientistlive.com For more information ✔ at
www.scientistlive.com/eurolab
UCT’s Clean Screen XCEL I column can be used for the extraction of designer benzodiazepines and novel opiate-like compounds
Danielle Mackowsky is with UCT.
www.unitedchem.com
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