ABSTRACT

Screening of biological specimens in the presence of illicit drugs is of great importance, particularly in criminal cases. The most relevant matrices to be analyzed for this purpose are plas-ma or blood, due to providing a good correlation between their concentration and pharmacological effects. For majority of labo-ratories, a common method for screening illicit drugs has been immunoassay methods and Gas Chromatography-coupled with Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) that is widely employed for con-firmation purposes. However, the widespread use of liquid chro-matography coupled single-stage or tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS, LC-MS/MS) is becoming increasingly significant for both qualitative and quantitative analysis of target analyse which could be polar and thermally labile. This assay method, consisted of morphine, (±)-amphetamine, (±)-methamphetami-ne, cocaine, benzoylecgonine, cocaethylene and (-)-11-nor-9-car-boxy-b9-THC was based on the detection of LC-ESI-MS. In this study, LC-MS/MS method for illicit drugs in postmortem blood was developed. These data provided a documentation to use LC-MS/MS technique without any precipitation for postmortem blood to detect low concentrations of some illicit drugs and app-lied to 62 postmortem forensic cases.

Keywords: illicit drug, screening, LC-MS/MS, postmor-tem blood