The analysis of amphetamine‐like cathinone derivatives using positive electrospray ionization with in‐source collision‐induced dissociation

Abstract

It has been shown that the product ion ESI mass spectra of cathinone derivatives are readily interpretable and are useful for the identification of this drug group in forensic samples.

Crystal structures and other properties of ephedrone (methcathinone) hydrochloride, N-acetylephedrine and N-acetylephedrone

“…Chromatography analyses of ephedrone have been frequently reported [19,20]. The GC-MS spectra of this generated compound in our study were compared with those of the other two.…”

Spectroscopic characterization and crystal structures of two cathinone derivatives: N-ethyl-2-amino-1-phenylpropan-1-one (ethcathinone) hydrochloride and N-ethyl-2-amino-1-(4-chlorophenyl)propan-1-one (4-CEC) hydrochloride

“…Both compounds are similar to another synthetic cathinone used recreationally and described earlier, i.e., N -ethyl-2-amino-1-(4-methylphenyl)propan-1-one hydrochloride (short name: 4-MEC) [11]. Compound 1 was examined chromatographically [9] and some mass spectrometry (MS) data were reported for this cathinone [9, 12, 13]. …”

“…Both compounds can be synthesized [12, 14, 15] starting from suitable racemic mixtures of 2-bromopropiophenones with ethylamine. The products of this reaction are largely racemic mixtures of ethcathinone hydrochloride (compound 1 ; in case of using 2-bromopropiophenone) or 4-chloroethcathinone (4-CEC) hydrochloride (compound 2 ; in case of using 4′-chloro-2-bromopropiophenone) (Fig.…”

DART–MS in-source collision induced dissociation and high mass accuracy for new psychoactive substance determinations

“…The spectrum shows the expected single peak representative of the parent [M + H] + typical of the DART-MS soft ionization method, with high mass accuracy values within the instrument specifications ( Table 1). The occurrence of the parent [M + H] + is a critical aspect of preliminary/ presumptive analysis that is often absent in the GC-MS spectra of cathinones, making definitive mass spectrometry identifications problematic when using the latter method [10,15,17,18,33] mixtures of the cathinone 3,4-DMEC and different adulterants, either benzocaine, lidocaine, or caffeine, were analyzed (Fig. 2b, c, and d, respectively, and Table 1).…”

“…developed or with limited effectiveness across this structural class of molecules, analogs, and emerging variants [8,[13][14][15][16]. Furthermore, confirmatory testing techniques employed for detecting cathinones center around conventional GC-MS, which also can be problematic for a number of reasons [8,13,16].…”