This study introduces an innovative device for the noninvasive sampling and chromatographic analysis of different compounds present in exhaled breath aerosol (EBA). The new sampling device, especially in light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic that forced many countries to impose mandatory facemasks, allows an easy monitoring of the subject’s exposure to different compounds they may come in contact with, actively or passively. The project combines the advantages of a fabric-phase sorptive membrane (FPSM) as an in vivo sampling device with a validated LC-MS/MS screening procedure able to monitor more than 739 chemicals with an overall analysis time of 18 min. The project involves the noninvasive in vivo sampling of the EBA using an FPSM array inserted inside an FFP2 mask. The study involved 15 healthy volunteers, and no restrictions were imposed during or prior to the sampling process regarding the consumption of drinks, food, or drugs. The FPSM array-LC-MS/MS approach allowed us to effectively exploit the advantages of the two complementary procedures (the convenient sampling by an FPSM array and the rapid analysis by LC-MS/MS), obtaining a powerful and green tool to carry out rapid screening analyses for human exposure to different compounds. The flexible fabric substrate, the sponge-like porous architecture of the high-efficiency sol–gel sorbent coating, the availability of a large cache of sorbent coatings, including polar, nonpolar, mixed mode, and zwitterionic phases, the easy installation into the facemask, and the possibility of sampling without interrupting regular activities provide FPSMs unparalleled advantages over other sampling techniques, and their applications are expected to expand to many other clinical or toxicological studies.

Narcotic and psychotropic substances are natural, synthetic, or semisynthetic compounds that are present in both solid and liquid illicit products. The alterations effects on the central nervous system related to their use can be psycholeptic, psychoanaleptic, or psychodiseptic and are able to generate tolerance, addiction, or dependence phenomena, creating social and public order problems. In this scenario, the analytical evaluations that aim to determine these analytes in seized nonbiological samples, and which assume the character of judicial evidence, must meet high analytical requirements of reliability, transparency, and procedures uniformity at a national level. For the first time in the literature, the herein validated method is able to provide the simultaneous quantitative determination of 37 of the most common narcotic substances as well as the most commonly used excipients/adulterants found in seized illicit material. Additionally, the validated method can process both solid and liquid samples maintaining the precision and trueness levels (intraday and interday) in accordance with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency international guidelines (<14.31 and <13.41%, respectively). Furthermore, it provides a simple and fast procedure for sample preparation using the dilute and shoot approach, exploiting the sensitivity and selectivity of the LC-MS/MS instrument configuration used and the signal acquisition in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode (both positive and negative polarization modes).

Background: Ionic liquids (ILs) are a unique class of compounds consisting exclusively of cations and anions that possess distinctive properties such as low volatility, high thermal stability, miscibility with water and organic solvents, electrolytic conductivity and non-flammability. Ionic liquids have been defined as "design solvents", because it is possible to modify their physical and chemical properties by appropriately choosing cations and anions, in order to meet the specific characteristics based on their potential application. Introduction: Due of their tunable nature and properties, ILs are considered as the perfect candidates for numerous applications in analytical chemistry including sample preparation, stationary phases in liquid or gas chromatography, additives in capillary electrophoresis, or in mass spectrometry for spectral and electrochemical analysis. In the last years, the number of publications regarding ILs has rapidly increased, highlighting the broad applications of these compounds in various fields of analytical chemistry. Results: This review first described the main physico-chemical characteristics of ionic liquids, and subsequently reported the various applications in different subdisciplines of analytical chemistry, including the extraction procedure and separation techniques. Furthermore, in each paragraph the most recent applications of ionic liquids in the food, environmental, biological, etc. fields have been described. Conclusion: Overall, the topic discussed highlights the key role of ionic liquids in analytical chemistry, giving hints for their future applications in chemistry but also in biology and medicine.

Background Since the beginning of the worldwide spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 to date, important knowledge has been obtained about the virus behavior in living subjects and on inanimate surfaces; however, there is still a lack of data on virus persistency on dead bodies and the risk of contagion from cadavers. Case presentation The present case shows the persistency of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 viral genome in nasopharyngeal swabs performed on a drowned Caucasian man, aged 41 years old, who was completely asymptomatic when he was alive, up to 41 days after death. Specific real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (TaqMan 2019-nCoV Assay Kit v2; Thermo Fisher Scientific, Italy and Realquality RQ-SARS-CoV-2, AB Analytical) was used to evaluate the swabs. Conclusions This data reflect the importance of postmortem swabs in all autopsy cases, and not only in potential severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2-related death, and also highlight the necessity to evaluate virus positivity a long time after the moment of death, even if a low initial viral load was assessed.

In recent years, major attention has been focused on microextraction procedures that allow high recovery of target analytes, regardless of the complexity of the sample matrices. The most used techniques included liquid-liquid extraction (LLE), solid-phase extraction (SPE), solid-phase microextraction (SPME), dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME), microextraction by packed sorbent (MEPS), and fabric-phase sorptive extraction (FPSE). These techniques manifest a rapid development of sample preparation techniques in different fields, such as biological, environmental, food sciences, natural products, forensic medicine, and toxicology. In the biological and forensic fields, where a wide variety of drugs with different chemical properties are analyzed, the sample preparation is required to make the sample suitable for the instrumental analysis, which often includes gas chromatography (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC) coupled with mass detectors or tandem mass detectors (MS/MS). In this review, we have focused our attention on the biological and forensic application of these innovative procedures, highlighting the major advantages and results that have been accomplished in laboratory and clinical practice.