Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 23, Issue 36, 2017

Background: The scope of forensic toxicology has been tremendously expanded over the past 50 years. From two general sections forensic toxicology can be further classified into 8-9 sections. Methods: The most outstanding improvement in forensic toxicology is the changes brought by instrumental development. The field of forensic toxicology was revolutionized by the development of immunoassay and benchtop GC-M Read More

This manuscript provides an overview for analysts, medical and scientific investigators, and laboratory administrators, the range of factors that should be considered to implement best practice forensic toxicology. These include laboratory influence over the collection of specimens, their proper transport and chain-of-custody before arrival in the laboratory. In addition, the laboratory needs to ensure properly trained staff Read More

International agreement concerning validation guidelines is important to obtain quality forensic bioanalytical research and routine applications as it all starts with the reporting of reliable analytical data. Standards for fundamental validation parameters are provided in guidelines as those from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the German speaking Gesellschaft fur Toxikologie un Read More

Background: In the field of forensic toxicology, the quality of analytical methods is of great importance to ensure the reliability of results and to avoid unjustified legal consequences. A key to high quality analytical methods is a thorough method development. Methods: The presented article will provide an overview on the process of developing methods for forensic applications. Results: This includes the definition of the meth Read More

Background: The analysis of nails as a keratinized matrix to detect drugs or illicit substances has been increasingly used in forensic and clinical toxicology as a complementary test, especially for the specific characteristics of stably accumulating substances for long periods of time. This allows a retrospective investigation of chronic drug abuse, monitoring continuous drug or pharmaceutical use, reveal in utero drug expo Read More

Background: The detection of drugs in hair analysis has progressively emerged as a consequence of the enhanced sensitivity of analytical techniques used in forensic toxicology; a greater advantage in using this matrix with respect to classical ones (i.e. urine and blood) is an easier and non-invasive sample collection, even when the careful supervision of law enforcement officers is required to avoid the risk that the sam Read More

New psychoactive substances (NPS) have emerged in a threatening way in the last decades. They are sold via the internet or head shops with several names (bath salts, Research chemical, RCs, Legal Highs) and forms (pills, tablets, powder...etc.), and are labelled ambiguously to escape governmental legislation. Designer drugs belong to different chemical classes, but cathinones derivatives presented the most prevalent Read More

Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is a powerful hallucinogen, active at very low dosages, with, as a direct consequence, potential difficulties to be detected and quantified in a clinical or forensic context, in body fluids and even more in hair. The aim of this work is to review literature data related to hair analysis of LSD with a particular focus on the main issues encountered in LSD detection in hair. Results of LSD investigatio Read More

The analysis of hair to detect drugs and drugs of abuse is performed in various contexts, including child protection cases, abstinence control programs, and workplace drug testing. This alternative matrix offers several advantages, such as a large detection window (months) and non-invasive collection. Segmental analysis of multiple hair strands for drugs and metabolites has been widely reported in the literature over Read More

Background: Mephedrone (4-methylmethcathinone, 4-MMC), a ring-substituted synthetic cathinone derivative has become established as a permanent illicit drug in the dynamic new psychoactive substances (NPS) scene. Objective: This review summarizes current knowledge on mephedrone concentrations in biological samples from cases of acute intoxications (fatal and non-fatal), pharmacokinetics studies, wast Read More

Background: Benzofurans and benzodifurans are two groups of psychoactive substances that had originally been synthesized for research purpose. Benzofurans' structure is quite similar to the known recreational drug 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine together with its active metabolite 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine. Benzodifurans are closely related to phenethylamines, but have more hallucinogens effects and muc Read More

Background: Drug concentrations obtained from post mortem samples do not necessarily reflect the concentrations at the time of death, and variations of concentration may be observed between different sites and/or different sampling times. These phenomena, collectively termed post mortem redistribution, concern numerous molecules (medications, drugs of abuse, gases, etc.) and can complicate the interpretation of Read More