Comprehensive Forensic Toxicological Analysis of Designer Drugs.

摘要

Since the introduction of synthetic heroin, designer drugs have been increasing in prevalence in the United States drug market over the past few decades. Recently, 'legal highs' in the form of 'bath salts' or 'research chemicals, labeled 'not for human consumption' have become a household term for one such class of designer drugs. While a number of federal and state bans have been enacted, the abuse of these designer drugs still continues while manufacturers have been staying one step ahead of the law with constantly evolving modifications to drug molecular structures. When an intoxication or fatality occurs, presumptive techniques, such as immunoassays, are employed to quickly screen biological specimens for common drugs of abuse. However, since cathinone derivatives are fairly new, few assays have been created for the detection of such compounds. It is hypothesized that during routine drug screens by ELISA or EMIT, the cathinone derivatives and other designer drugs may be missed. In a toxicology lab, a negative screen would not be further investigated and the substances may never be detected. For this reason, it is important to investigate how they may or may not react in presumptive screens, i.e., pre-existing commercial immunoassays. In this project, 16 different ELISA reagents from Immunalysis, Neogen, OraSure, and Randox were evaluated to determine the cross-reactivity of thirty designer drugs, including 24 phenylethylamines (including MDPV and eight cathinone derivatives), three piperazines, and three tryptamines in serum. In addition, two EMIT reagents were evaluated to determine the cross-reactivity of these same compounds in urine. The study determined the percent crossreactivity for the compounds in commercial immunoassays targeting amphetamine, methamphetamine and/or MDMA, benzylpiperazine, mephentermine, methylphenidate, ketamine, MDPV, mephedrone, methcathinone, PCP, and cotinine.