TY - JOUR
T1 - Quantitative analysis of mephedrone using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectroscopy
T2 - application to human hair
AU - Shah, Syeda A.B.
AU - Deshmukh, Nawed I.K.
AU - Barker, James
AU - Petróczi, Andrea
AU - Cross, Paul
AU - Archer, Roland
AU - Naughton, Declan P.
PY - 2012/3/5
Y1 - 2012/3/5
N2 - Recent abuse of designer drugs such as mephedrone has presented a requirement for sensitive, reliable and reproducible methods for the detection of these controlled drugs in different matrices. This study focuses on a fully developed validated method for the quantitative analysis of mephedrone and its two metabolites 4-methylephedrine and 4-methylnorephedrine in human hair. The calibration curve was found to be linear in the range 5-100pg/mg for mephedrone and 10-150pg/mg for 4-methylephedrine and 4-methylnorephedrine. The method was successfully validated for the intraday precision, interday precision, limit of detection, accuracy and extraction recovery. Five out of 154 hair samples were confirmed to be positive for mephedrone. Due to the structural similarities to other methcathinones and amphetamines, one can propose the metabolism for mephedrone based on a similar pathway that has been previously used for these psychoactive drugs. The outlined method can be valuable for the future detection of mephedrone and its two metabolites in hair.
AB - Recent abuse of designer drugs such as mephedrone has presented a requirement for sensitive, reliable and reproducible methods for the detection of these controlled drugs in different matrices. This study focuses on a fully developed validated method for the quantitative analysis of mephedrone and its two metabolites 4-methylephedrine and 4-methylnorephedrine in human hair. The calibration curve was found to be linear in the range 5-100pg/mg for mephedrone and 10-150pg/mg for 4-methylephedrine and 4-methylnorephedrine. The method was successfully validated for the intraday precision, interday precision, limit of detection, accuracy and extraction recovery. Five out of 154 hair samples were confirmed to be positive for mephedrone. Due to the structural similarities to other methcathinones and amphetamines, one can propose the metabolism for mephedrone based on a similar pathway that has been previously used for these psychoactive drugs. The outlined method can be valuable for the future detection of mephedrone and its two metabolites in hair.
KW - Allied health professions and studies
UR - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22209483
U2 - 10.1016/j.jpba.2011.11.026
DO - 10.1016/j.jpba.2011.11.026
M3 - Article
C2 - 22209483
SN - 0731-7085
VL - 61
SP - 64
EP - 69
JO - Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis
JF - Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis
IS - 1
ER -