Degradation of the opium alkaloids in pharmaceutical relics from the eighteenth century

Unearthed opium: development of a UHPLC-MS/MS method for the determination of Papaver somniferum alkaloids in Daunian vessels

“…For what concerns morphine and codeine, the detection of these alkaloids is in accordance with other reports related to ancient vessels ( Koschel, 1996 ; Linares et al, 2022 ); it can be postulated that even if morphine is relatively unstable, its detection in ancient vessels is possible due to its high concentration in the original content. This hypothesis is reinforced by the data provided by Nesmerak et al, who analyzed opium preparations aged more than 200 years and found that in some samples, morphine was still the main component ( Nesměrák et al, 2019 ). In our samples, several factors may have contributed to the preservation of morphinan alkaloids and, especially, the fact that the vessels have been buried for a long period, with a low presence of oxygen.…”

“…For analyte identification, the accurate mass of the precursor and fragment ions was taken into account, with a maximum tolerance of 5 ppm. An inclusion list with target opioids, as well as their degradation products ( Nesměrák et al, 2019 ), was incorporated into the method in order to preferentially fragment these target compounds. The proprietary software Compound Discoverer was used to assist untargeted analysis.…”

“…To perform targeted identification, increasing compound identification confidence at the same time, an information-dependent acquisition (IDA) approach was developed: multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) was used as the survey scan, while enhanced product ion (EPI) was selected as the dependent scan. For morphine, thebaine, and codeine, for which standards were available, all parameters were optimized by direct infusion of the relative standards; for the other compounds of interest, MRM transitions were inferred from the literature data ( Mueller et al, 2005 ; Nesměrák et al, 2019 ). The IDA criteria were set to conduct EPI scans for each detected MRM transition which exceeded 5,000 cps (selected threshold).…”