Journal of Analytical Toxicology

Ensuring specimen validity is an essential aspect of toxicological laboratories. In recent years, substituting authentic urine specimens for synthetic urine has become increasingly popular. Such synthetic urine products consist of components expected in normal urine and show physiological values for specific gravity and pH. Thus, standard specimen validity testing may fail in revealing adulteration by synthetic urine. The present study investigated three methods to distinguish authentic and synthetic urine specimens: enzymatic detection of uric acid, the commercially available Axiom Test True Synthetic Urine, and LC-MS/MS analysis of 10 endogenous biomolecules...

Flualprazolam and flubromazolam are synthetic benzodiazepines that have not been approved for use in humans. They are categorized as novel psychoactive substances (NPS), and have been increasingly encountered in forensic case work. This report examines information from cases analyzed for flualprazolam and flubromazolam between July 1 and December 31, 2021 to identify the prevalence, trends and demographic data associated with these novel drugs in Ontario, Canada. Flualprazolam was identified in blood, serum or liver in 395 death investigations, 108 impaired driving and five sexual assault cases...

Amatoxins and phallotoxins are toxic cyclopeptides found in the genus Amanita and are among the predominant causes of foodborne sickness and poisoning-related fatalities in China. This study introduces and validates a simple, rapid, and cost-effective ultra-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method for the simultaneous determination and quantification of α-amanitin, β-amanitin, γ-amanitin, phallisacin (PSC), phallacidin (PCD), and phalloidin (POD) in human blood and urine...

Soon approaching its 50th anniversary, Journal of Analytical Toxicology (JAT) is an international scholarly publication specializing in analytical and forensic aspects of toxicology. Science Citation Index (SCI) and Journal Citation Reports (JCR), both of which are part of the Web-of-Science (WOS) database, were used to make a bibliometric evaluation of JAT articles. Between 1977 (volume 1) and 2023 (volume 47), a total of = n = 4,785 items were published in JAT; the top-ten most highly cited articles and the most prolific authors were identified...

Hexahydrocannabinol (HHC) is an emerging semi-synthetic cannabinoid, that is obtained from cyclization of cannabidiol and subsequent hydrogenation. As a potentially legal alternative of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC), it is increasingly seized in the United States and Europe. The aims of this study were to investigate the metabolism of HHC in pooled human liver S9 fraction (pHLS9), in rat, and human samples. Additionally, a locally obtained low-THC cannabis product was investigated that was advertised with elevated concentration of HHC...

Excessive drinking and drunkenness are underlying factors in many fatal accidents, which makes the quantitative determination of ethanol in postmortem (PM) specimens an essential part of all unnatural death investigations. The same analytical methods are used to determine ethanol in blood taken from living and deceased persons, although in medical examiner cases interpretation of the results is more complicated, owing to various pre-analytical factors. The biggest problem is that under anaerobic conditions ethanol can be produced naturally in decomposed bodies by microbial activity and fermentation of blood glucose...

In 2019, nearly 3000 U.S. residents developed severe lung injury associated with recent use of e-cigarette or vaping products. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) responded to the outbreak, which was formally defined as e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury (EVALI). CDC Laboratory rapidly developed assays to analyze potentially harmful and addictive substances in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid collected from EVALI case patients. This report describes the development and validation of a high-throughput isotope dilution HPLC-MS/MS method for measuring two nicotine biomarkers, cotinine (COT) and trans-3'-hydroxycotinine (HCT), in BAL fluid samples...

Postmortem redistribution (PMR), a well-known phenomenon in forensic toxicology, can result in substantial changes in drug concentrations after death, depending on the chemical characteristics of the drug, blood collection site, storage conditions of the body and postmortem interval (PMI). Limited PMR data are available for Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive component in Cannabis sativa. PMR was evaluated after controlled cannabis inhalation via a smoking machine and exposure chamber in New Zealand white rabbits...

Thiocyanate is an inorganic compound used in industrial applications. Here, we report a case of suicidal death due to acute thiocyanate overdose. A 44-year-old man who consumed an unknown amount of thiocyanate solution was transferred to the emergency room and died two hours after admission. An autopsy was performed two days after death. General toxicological analysis of blood using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry found no drug or alcohol. Quantification using GC-MS post-derivatization with pentafluorobenzyl bromide revealed 2,290 and 1,920 mg/L of thiocyanate in the heart and femoral blood samples, respectively...

Synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists (SCRAs) remain a major public health concern, with their use implicated in intoxications and drug-related deaths worldwide. Increasing our systematic understanding of SCRA metabolism supports clinical and forensic toxicology casework, facilitating the timely identification of analytical targets for toxicological screening procedures and confirmatory analysis. This is particularly important as new SCRAs continue to emerge on the illicit drug market. In this work, the metabolism of ADB-HEXINACA (ADB-HINACA, N-[1-amino-3,3-dimethyl-1-oxobutan-2-yl]-1-hexyl-1H-indazole-3-carboxamide), which has increased in prevalence in the United Kingdom and other jurisdictions, was investigated using in vitro techniques...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Immunoassay (IA) is currently the most widely used technique for toxicological screening in drug impaired driving investigations. However, practical limitations in the scope of testing, and the emergence of new psychoactive substances (NPS), have highlighted the need for alternative approaches, particularly mass spectrometry-based screening. High resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) broadens the scope of testing to include NPS, and increases analyte specificity compared to IA. In addition, it provides a platform with increased flexibility and adaptability to incorporate emerging drugs of interest due to the transient drug market...

Benzimidazole opioids, often referred to as nitazenes, represent a subgroup of new psychoactive substances with a recent increase in fatal overdoses in the US and Europe. With a variety of analogs emerging on the illicit drug market, forensic labs are challenged to identify these potent drugs. We here present a simple quantitative approach for the determination of nine nitazene analogs, namely, clonitazene, etodesnitazene, etonitazene, etonitazepyne, flunitazene, isotonitazene, metodesnitazene, metonitazene, and protonitazene in whole blood using liquid-phase microextraction and electromembrane extraction in a 96-well format and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry...

While many NPSs often disappear from the drug market rather quickly, some, such as synthetic cathinones (SCs), still remain due to their popularity among users. The current knowledge of SCs concentrations in blood samples is based mainly on the published case reports of intoxications or fatalities caused by SCs intake. The aim of the present study was to present and interpret the obtained toxicological analysis results of these cases, in which it was possible to determine or detect the presence of one of the isomers of chloromethcathonone (CMC) along with its intake biomarker - dihydro-CMC...

Desalkylgidazepam, also known as bromonordiazepam, is the latest designer benzodiazepine to appear in postmortem blood samples in British Columbia. Our laboratory was first alerted to the presence of desalkylgidazepam in seized drug samples in May 2022 and the analyte was added to an in-house library shortly thereafter. Previously acquired spectra from routine death investigation cases were reprocessed using the updated library with the first presumptive identification of desalkylgidazepam occurring in a sample received in April 2022...

Δ8-Tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ8-THC) recently became widely available as an alternative to cannabis. Δ8-THC is likely impairing and poses a threat to workplace and traffic safety. In the present study the prevalence of Δ8-THC in workplace drug testing was investigated by analyzing 1,504 urine specimens with a positive immunoassay cannabinoid initial test using an LC-MS-MS method quantifying 15 cannabinoid analytes after hydrolysis. Δ8-tetrahydrocannabinol-9-carboxylic acid (Δ8-THC-COOH) was detected in 378 urine specimens (15 ng/mL cutoff), compared to 1,144 specimens containing Δ9-THC-COOH...

Forensic toxicology laboratories often encounter casework backlogs, which raise concerns for drug stability that can be affected by long storage times, temperature, and preservatives, or the lack thereof. The focus of this research was to evaluate the impact of these factors on the stability of 17 synthetic cannabinoids in human whole blood and 10 associated metabolites in human urine. The fortified biological specimens were stored under room temperature (20°C), refrigerator (4°C), and freezer (-20°C) conditions for a period of 52 weeks...

An increase in suicide cases by sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite ingestion has been noted in the scientific literature. We report on the possible impact of nitrate/nitrite-caused methemoglobinemia on carboxyhemoglobin measurement by spectrophotometric methods. Elevated methemoglobin saturation may result in insufficient reducing agent to convert methemoglobin to deoxygenated hemoglobin, affecting the measured total hemoglobin and carboxyhemoglobin saturation. We highlight four cases where the cause of death was attributed to sodium nitrate or sodium nitrite ingestion...

In recent years, mitragynine has been consistently detected in driving under the influence of drug (DUID) cases. In this paper, we evaluate three years (2017-2019) worth of DUID data from arrested drivers in Orange County, CA, USA. From the 25,398 DUID cases received in those three years, there were 60 (0.24%) cases with detectable concentrations, >10 ng/mL, of mitragynine. The majority of the drivers were male (90%), and were stopped during the week (81%), considered Monday 0000 to Friday 1159. The concentration range for all mitragynine cases was 10...

Psilocin is an active substance and dephosphorylated product of psilocybin formed after ingestion of mushrooms. The low stability caused by the quick oxidation of this analyte requires sensitive methods for its determination in biological matrices. In this work, we described a method development, optimization, and validation for the quantification of psilocin in authentic oral fluid samples by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) was performed using 100 µL of oral fluid samples collected with Quantisal™ device and t-butyl methyl ether (MTBE) as the extraction solvent...