Evaluation of an on‐site test device for the heroin metabolite 6‐acetylmorphine in urine

Abstract

Detection of heroin use is an important task in clinical drug testing and can be best performed by using 6-acetylmorphine as the target analyte. This study was performed to evaluate an on-site test for 6-acetylmorphine screening in urine with an assigned cut-off limit at 10 ng/mL. The reference method was a forensic accredited liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method. The study confirmed that negative controls and negative authentic specimen resulted in negative readings. Low cross-reactivity was recorded from other potential interfering opioids. Prepared standards and commercial calibrators demonstrated that the cutoff level of the test was lower than the assigned value and rather 2 ng/mL. A study using authentic specimens from patients on substitution treatment with methadone, morphine, and buprenorphine confirmed that the real cut-off level was 2 ng/mL. Using this value as cutoff limit the sensitivity and specificity of the test was 100%.

Filter Cone Spray Ionization Coupled to a Portable MS System: Application to On-Site Forensic Evidence and Environmental Sample Analysis

“…The integrated filtration capabilities of FCSI-MS were also shown robust to complex samples of interest to toxicological assessments. While fieldable methods for toxicological screening of simple biomatrices such as oral fluid and urine have been reported, , analyses of more complex samples are typically relegated to lab-based, hyphenated MS techniques known for their low throughput . Field-based toxicological assessment of neat samples such as stomach contents and adulterated food products could allow diagnostic screening in certain scenarios (e.g., overdosing, unresponsive individuals), leading to potential remediation and treatment of toxicant exposure, rather than just post-mortem assessments.…”