Heroin is one of the most frequently seized drugs in the South-Eastern Europe. Due to the position in the Balkan route, the Republic of Serbia keeps important role in suppression of the trafficking of heroin for domestic and foreign illegal market. This research is aimed to provide a good scientific approach in the field of seized heroin analysis. Two different forms of heroin are present in the illegal market, mostly in mixtures with typical "cutting" agents: caffeine, paracetamol and sugars. It was observed that the quantity of pure heroin in seized samples slightly increases from year to year. The aim of this study was to produce a reliable and fast procedure for classification of illicit heroin samples and determination of the concentration range of heroin in the samples. For that purpose the Fourier Transformed Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR technique) was used and combined with chemometric methods (PCA, CA, PLS). Principal components analysis (PCA), as an unsupervised model, was used for exploratory purposes, to identify trends, similarities and differences between samples, by reducing the dimensionality of the data. The cluster classification of examined samples turned out to be extremely useful to evaluate the possibilities of the ATR-FTIR technique to classify the samples appropriately into the patterns, the constituted clusters. Additionally PLS was the suitable method for the purpose of determination of the heroin hydrochloride concentration range in examined samples. It is proved that the joined application of spectroscopy and chemometrics can be extremely convenient and useful for forensic and drugs control laboratories.
One of the new synthetic cathinones that has a high tendency to replace ecstasy and other established synthetic drugs is N-ethylpentylone, (NEP), due to its high potency, stimulative, hedonic and hallucinatory effects. In order to examine the interactions of NEP, the apparent molar quantities, thermal expansion coefficient, the apparent molar volume at infinite dilution and the limiting apparent molar expansibility were calculated from the experimental measurements of the density of NEP aqueous solutions in different temperature and molality ranges, from T = (293.15 to 313.15) K and from m = (0.05898 to 0.0977) mol·kg–1, respectively. The taste of NEP was estimated by calculated values of apparent specific molar volume at infinite dilution and it was concluded that its taste in aqueous solutions is bitter. Also, using the spectrofluorimetric technique, an intermolecular deactivation of in situ formed ethidium bromide (EB) complex with DNA (EB-DNA) was investigated in the presence of NEP. Obtained results indicated good affinity and efficiency of NEP to substitute EB from the EB-DNA complex via intercalation mode. Using molecular docking, it was concluded that the binding energy obtained for NEP indicates its higher affinity to interact with DNA, compared to methamphetamine and amphetamine, but lower compared to ecstasy. The affinity of NEP to bind to bovine serum albumin (BSA) was also investigated and discussed. It is shown that NEP could be efficiently transported and distributed through the blood and cells.
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