Hair to document exposure to glibenclamide

Among the drugs that are used to incapacitate victims such as kids or elderly for sedation or for criminal gain such as sexual offences or robberies, glibenclamide, an antidiabetic was never mentioned. To document the interest of hair testing in such forensic situations, we have developed an original method to test for glibenclamide. A 30-year-old man was admitted to the Emergency Unit for coma and seizures after a party with some members of his family. Blood glucose was 0.40 g/l. A hair specimen was collected several weeks after the event and divided into two segments of 2 cm. Twenty milligrams of each segment cut into small pieces were incubated overnight in a phosphate buffer (pH 5.5), in presence of gliclazide used as internal standard (IS). A liquid/liquid extraction was realized with a mixture of diethyl ether/methylene chloride, and hair extract was separated on a XTerra MS C18 column using a gradient of acetonitrile and formate buffer. Detection of glibenclamide was achieved using two transitions: m/z 493.9 to 168.9 and 493.9 to 368.8. Linearity was observed from 5 to 1000 pg/mg (r2 = 0.956) with a limit of quantification at 5 pg/mg and a clean-up recovery of about 61%. Within-batch precision and bias were 9.0 and 9.5%, respectively. Ion suppression tested on drug-free hair was about 50%. Glibenclamide tested positive in the two consecutive segments (root to 2 cm: 23 pg/mg and 2–4 cm: 31 pg/mg). These findings were in accordance with a repetitive exposure to the drug. The concentrations were compared with those obtained after a single and a daily dose administration. In the hair of a subject receiving a single 5 mg dose and collected 4 weeks later, glibenclamide was detected in the proximal segment at 5 pg/mg. After a 20 mg/day dose, the hair concentration of a subject under glibenclamide therapy was 650 pg/mg.