Screening for new psychoactive substances in hair by ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography–electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry

• Determination of various NPS in hair.
• Minimal sample preparation.
• High sensitivity/high throughput method.
• Many drugs of different classed determined (synthetic cannabinoids, cathinones, piperazines, ketamine).

In the latest years, many new psychoactive substances (NPS) from several drug classes have appeared in the illicit drug market. Their rapid, sensitive and specific identification in biological fluids is hence of great concern for clinical and forensic toxicologists. Here is described a multi-analyte method for the determination of NPS, pertaining to different chemical classes (synthetic cannabinoids, synthetic cathinones, ketamine, piperazines and amphetamine-type substances—ATS) in human hair using ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC–MS/MS) in electrospray ionization mode. We focused on a sample preparation able to extract the different classes of NPS. About 30 mg of hair was decontaminated and incubated overnight under sonication in different conditions depending on the type of analytes to be extracted: (a) with 300 μL of HCOOH 0.1% for cathinones, piperazines and ATS; (b) with 300 μL of MeOH for synthetic cannabinoids. Ten microliter of the extracts were then injected in UHPLC–ESI–MS/MS in MRM mode. The LODs varied from 2 pg/mg to 20 pg/mg. The method was linear in the range from the LOQ to 500 pg/mg and showed acceptable precision (%RSD < 15) and accuracy (%E < 15) for all the analytes. The method was finally applied on 50 samples from real forensic cases (driving license re-granting, postmortem toxicological analyses, workplace drug testing). In three samples we detected synthetic cannabinoids, in four samples cathinones or ephedrines, in two samples ketamine.