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Determination of ketamine and amphetamines in hair by LC/MS/MS

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Abstract

A liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method was developed for the determination of ketamine (with its metabolite norketamine) and some amphetamines (amphetamine, methamphetamine, methylenedioxyamphetamine, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine). This method was developed to determine these compounds in hair and is able to simultaneously quantify all of them in human hair. Hair samples (20 mg) were washed and pulverized, and an extraction with formic acid (0.01%) and ultrasonication for 4 h was used. Deuterated analogs of the analytes were used as internal standards for quantification. Linearity from 0.5 to 25 ng/mg was obtained for both ketamine (and norketamine) and amphetamines with correlation coefficients exceeding 0.99. The limit of detection and the limit of quantification obtained were 0.1 and 0.5 ng/mg, respectively, for ketamine and amphetamines. A total of 25 hair samples from known drug abusers (relating to designer drug consumption or consumption of amphetamines) were examined by this validated method. The results show that the proposed method is suitable for testing these drugs in a single sample of hair. In addition, it is simpler and faster than analysis by conventional methods such as gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, which usually require a more laborious extraction procedure and, in most of cases, an additional derivatization process.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support received from the Consellería de Innovación e Industria (Xunta de Galicia), cofinanced by the European Social Fund, is acknowledged. The authors would like to thank D. Igor Fochi (specialist at Thermo Fisher) for his technical assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Legal Medicine, Forensic Toxicology Service, Faculty of Medicine, C/ San Francisco s/n, 15782, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    María Jesús Tabernero & Ana María Bermejo

  2. Institute of Legal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Largo F. Vito, 1, 00168, Rome, Italy

    Maria Linda Felli & Marcello Chiarotti

Authors
  1. María Jesús Tabernero
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  2. Maria Linda Felli
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  3. Ana María Bermejo
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  4. Marcello Chiarotti
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Correspondence to María Jesús Tabernero.

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Tabernero, M.J., Felli, M.L., Bermejo, A.M. et al. Determination of ketamine and amphetamines in hair by LC/MS/MS. Anal Bioanal Chem 395, 2547–2557 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-009-3163-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-009-3163-4

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