UCT Clean Screen DAU and Post Mortem Analysis of MDPV

MDPV, a bathsalt type drug, has become widely known in the drugs and driving world as  a psychoactive, synthetic analog of the central nervous system stimulant cathinone. It's recent popularity as a recreational drug in the United States has led to numerous reports to poison control centers across the country.  As with other synthetic cathinones, the recreational use of MDPV has resulted in death.

Forensic toxicologists working with these drugs in the post mortem area are now being  challenged with developing highly efficient methods of extraction, analysis, and interpretation of the results across many biological samples such as whole blood, urine, and tissue material.  UCT is known for its manufacturing of the finest sorbent, Clean Screen DAU, for GC-MS and LC-MS/MS types of analysis where clean extracts mean lower limits of detection, less matrix effect and higher recoveries and reproducibility.  In a recent paper in Journal of Analytical Toxicology (April 2013), the forensic toxicology laboratory at Cuyhoga County (Ohio), led by Dr. John Wyman, D-ABFT, employed UCT's Clean Screen DAU to screen samples by GC-MS, but to also quantify MDPV in blood, liver, kidney and bile samples by LC-MS/MS.  The use of the Clean Screen DAU SPE was shown to be able to accommodate samples of post mortem blood as well as the post mortem tissue samples. When forensic toxicologists seek the finest SPE sorbents, they look to UCT for the best, as demonstrated in this article.  

UCT Poster Presentation at SOFT 2012

Hair analysis for the presence of illicit drugs is becoming one of the most challenging types of forensic toxicological analysis. At this years SOFT meeting, Dr. Jeff Hackett will be presenting the results of a collaborative project involving Amphetamines and Synthetic Cathinones in hair samples (Poster P03). In this work, UCT's flagship sorbent Clean Screen DAU (CSDAU206) was employed to produce a highly efficient validated methodology for the simultaneous extraction of 4 Amphetamines (Amphetamine, methamphetamine, MDA, and  MDMA) and 9 Synthetic Cathinones (Butylone, ethylone, flephedrone, mephedrone, methylone, methedrone, methcathinone (4-MEC), methylenedioxypyravalerone (MDPV) and pyravalerone) from 10 mg samples of hair. This new methodology which involves a short base digestion time followed by SPE and LC-MS/MS permits limits of quantitation (LOQ) of 0.05 ng/ mg, and detection(LOD) of 0.1 ng/ mg of sample to be achieved with excellent recoveries (greater than 95%) and minimal matrix effects (less than 6%). This newer methodology demonstrates the strength of the DAU sorbent in the analysis of not only familiar drugs but new and novel ones as well.