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Comparison of serum and whole blood concentrations in quetiapine overdose cases

Forensic Toxicology volume 40, pages 403–406 (2022)Cite this article

Abstract

This study aimed to compare whole blood and serum concentrations of quetiapine in acute poisoning cases. Authentic whole blood and respective serum samples were routinely collected from patients diagnosed with blood poisoning at our University Hospital. Accordingly, whole blood and serum paired samples from nine patients (one male and eight female patients) were analyzed for quetiapine using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC–MS). Quetiapine concentrations in whole blood and serum samples ranged widely from 5.4 to 2780 ng/mL and 9.9 to 2500 ng/mL, respectively. The whole blood/serum concentration ratio was 0.5–1.1 and increased together with an increase in whole blood and serum quetiapine concentrations. The ratio was reversed at around 2500 ng/mL to > 1. Our findings suggest that whole blood concentrations are more useful than serum concentrations in diagnosing quetiapine poisonings.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP17K09278. The authors would like to thank Enago (www.enago.jp) for the English language review.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine, Tokai University School of Medicine, Kanagawa, Japan

    Takeshi Saito, Tomoatsu Tsuji, Seiji Morita & Yoshihide Nakagawa

  2. Department of Forensic Medicine, Graduate School of Biomedical and Health Sciences, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan

    Akira Namera

Authors
  1. Takeshi Saito
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  2. Tomoatsu Tsuji
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  3. Akira Namera
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  4. Seiji Morita
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  5. Yoshihide Nakagawa
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Correspondence to Takeshi Saito.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest associated with this manuscript.

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Tokai University School of Medicine, and informed consent was obtained from all patients prior to study participation (17R 028).

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Saito, T., Tsuji, T., Namera, A. et al. Comparison of serum and whole blood concentrations in quetiapine overdose cases. Forensic Toxicol 40, 403–406 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11419-022-00618-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11419-022-00618-w

Keywords

  • Acute quetiapine poisoning
  • Therapeutic drug concentrations
  • Whole blood/serum concentration ratios
  • Diagnosis