Maria Schüller, Ivana Lucic, Åse Marit Leere Øiestad, Stig Pedersen-Bjergaard, Elisabeth Leere Øiestad
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...
September 13, 2023: Journal of Analytical Toxicology