A fast and reliable method for GHB quantitation in whole blood by GC–MS/MS (TQD) for forensic purposes

Castro, André L.; Tarelho, Sónia; Dias, Mário; Reis, Flávio; Teixeira, Helena M.

doi:10.1016/j.jpba.2015.11.038

Cited by 11 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…or liquid chromatography (LC) procedures. These hyphenated techniques of GC-FID, GC-MS, GC-MS/MS, or LC-MS/MS are highly sensitive and specific for quantification analysis of GHB in a wide range of biological specimens including blood, saliva, urine, hair strands, etc [34][35][36].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpreting γ-hydroxybutyrate concentrations for clinical and forensic purposes

Busardò

Jones

2018

Clinical Toxicology

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Introduction: c-Hydroxybutyric acid is an endogenous substance, a therapeutic agent, and a recreational drug of abuse. This psychoactive substance acts as a depressant of the central nervous system and is commonly encountered in clinical and forensic practice, including impaired drivers, poisoned patients, and drug-related intoxication deaths. Objective: The aim of this review is to assist clinical and forensic practitioners with the interpretation of c-hydroxybutyric acid concentrations in blood, urine, and alternative biological specimens from living and deceased persons. Methods: The information sources used to prepare this review were PubMed, Scopus, and Web-of-Science. These databases were searched using keywords c-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), blood, urine, alternative specimens, non-conventional biological matrices, saliva, oral fluid, sweat, hair, vitreous humor (VH), brain, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), dried blood spots (DBS), breast milk, and various combinations thereof. The resulting 4228 references were screened to exclude duplicates, which left 1980 articles for further consideration. These publications were carefully evaluated by taking into account the main aims of the review and 143 scientific papers were considered relevant. Analytical methods: The analytical methods used to determine c-hydroxybutyric acid in blood and other biological specimens make use of gas-or liquid-chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. These hyphenated techniques are accurate, precise, and specific for their intended purposes and the lower limit of quantitation in blood and other specimens is 0.5 mg/L or less. Human pharmacokinetics: GHB is rapidly absorbed from the gut and distributes into the total body water compartment. Only a small fraction of the dose (1-2%) is excreted unchanged in the urine. The plasma elimination half-life of c-hydroxybutyric acid is short, being only about 0.5-0.9 h, which requires timely sampling of blood and other biological specimens for clinical and forensic analysis. Endogenous concentrations of GHB in blood: GHB is both an endogenous metabolite and a drug of abuse, which complicates interpretation of the laboratory results of analysis. Moreover, the concentrations of GHB in blood and other specimens tend to increase after sampling, especially in autopsy cases. This requires the use of practical "cut-off" concentrations to avoid reporting false positive results. These cutoffs are different for different biological specimen types. Concentrations of GHB in clinical and forensic practice: As a recreational drug GHB is predominantly used by young males (94%) with a mean age of 27.1 years. The mean (median) and range of concentrations in blood from apprehended drivers was 90 mg/L (82 mg/L) and 8-600 mg/L, respectively. The concentration distributions in blood taken from living and deceased persons overlapped, although the mean (median) and range of concentrations were higher in intoxication deaths; 640 mg/ L (280 mg/L) and 30-9200 mg/L, respectively. Analysis of GHB in alternative specimens: All bi...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpreting γ-hydroxybutyrate concentrations for clinical and forensic purposes

Busardò

Jones

2018

Clinical Toxicology

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“…SVM can solve small sample classification, high-dimensional data classification, and nonlinear problems; however, it is more difficult to train large-scale samples and deal with multiclassification problems. Random forests (RF) algorithm was first proposed by Breiman in 2001 [ 44 ] and widely used [ 45 , 46 ] since it can distinguish the differences between different group samples effectively. RF is a supervised machine learning classifier, including a collection of classification and regression trees.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Urine Metabonomics Study of Rat Bladder Cancer by Combining Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry with Random Forest Algorithm

Fang

Liu

Huang

et al. 2020

International Journal of Analytical Chemistry

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A urine metabolomics study based on gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and multivariate statistical analysis was applied to distinguish rat bladder cancer. Urine samples with different stages were collected from animal models, i.e., the early stage, medium stage, and advanced stage of the bladder cancer model group and healthy group. After resolving urea with urease, the urine samples were extracted with methanol and, then, derived with N, O-Bis(trimethylsilyl) trifluoroacetamide and trimethylchlorosilane (BSTFA + TMCS, 99 : 1, v/v), before analyzed by GC-MS. Three classification models, i.e., healthy control vs. early- and middle-stage groups, healthy control vs. advanced-stage group, and early- and middle-stage groups vs. advanced-stage group, were established to analyze these experimental data by using Random Forests (RF) algorithm, respectively. The classification results showed that combining random forest algorithm with metabolites characters, the differences caused by the progress of disease could be effectively exhibited. Our results showed that glyceric acid, 2, 3-dihydroxybutanoic acid, N-(oxohexyl)-glycine, and D-turanose had higher contributions in classification of different groups. The pathway analysis results showed that these metabolites had relationships with starch and sucrose, glycine, serine, threonine, and galactose metabolism. Our study results suggested that urine metabolomics was an effective approach for disease diagnosis.

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“…Whole blood samples were collected from the femoral vein and hair samples from the posterior vertex region of the head, according to the autopsy procedures of the Forensic Clinical and Pathology Department of the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, for further analysis using specific procedures. Ten microlitres of internal standard solution (1 mg/L of sample) were added to a 100 µL whole blood aliquot, and then mixed with 200 µL of methanol, as previously described by Castro et al [14]. The mixture was then centrifuged at 5000 rpm, for 30 minutes, and the methanolic phase transferred to a clean glass vial to be dried under a nitrogen flow.…”

Section: Samples Preparation 221 Whole Bloodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparison of endogenous GHB concentrations in blood and hair in death cases with emphasis on the post mortem interval

et al. 2016

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Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) is an endogenous compound which has a story of clinical use and illicit abuse since the 1960's. The possibility to use a multi-sample approach for GHB evaluation, including whole blood and hair, to better characterize a forensic toxicology case and evaluate a possible causal association with the death is an exciting up-to-date issue. In addition, its post-mortem behaviour, namely regarding degradation and metabolism, has been increasingly investigated as a putative biomarker for post-mortem interval (PMI) estimation. Thus, in order to contribute to clarification of this specific aspect, whole blood and hair post-mortem GHB levels were evaluated in 32 real cases with previous information on death and autopsy data. The results obtained suggest that the PMI (until 5 days between death and sampling) influences GHB whole blood concentration, but not GHB levels in hair samples. No differences were encountered for the other parameters evaluated, including age, gender, cause of death and presence or absence of substances. This study brings new insights regarding the usefulness of GHB levels in forensic toxicology, which might be further strengthened with larger, but comparable, studies from other laboratories and institutions in the context of legal medicine.

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A fast and reliable method for GHB quantitation in whole blood by GC–MS/MS (TQD) for forensic purposes

Cited by 11 publications

References 18 publications

Interpreting γ-hydroxybutyrate concentrations for clinical and forensic purposes

Interpreting γ-hydroxybutyrate concentrations for clinical and forensic purposes

A Urine Metabonomics Study of Rat Bladder Cancer by Combining Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry with Random Forest Algorithm

Comparison of endogenous GHB concentrations in blood and hair in death cases with emphasis on the post mortem interval

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