Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
103402 | Legal Medicine | 2016 | 7 Pages |
•Databases of 104 psychotropic compounds.•Includes 32 synthetic cannabinoids, 29 cathinone derivatives, 34 phenethylamine derivatives, and others.•There are both GC-PCI-MS/MS and LC-ESI-MS/MS databases.•These databases may be very useful for daily toxicological analysis.
Designer psychotropic compounds continue to be a major problem in Japan and all around the world. Electron impact mass spectrometry (GC-EI-MS) and liquid chromatography with electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS/MS) data on these compounds have been widely reported. In this report, we present a detection method that has been rarely utilized to analyze these types of compounds, gas chromatography with positive chemical ionization and tandem mass spectrometry (GC-PCI-MS/MS). We report on the development of GC-PCI-MS/MS and LC-ESI-MS/MS databases of 104 psychotropic compounds, including 32 cannabinoid derivatives, 29 cathinone derivatives, 34 phenethylamine derivatives, and several other designer compounds. Using this database, we were able to detect 5 psychotropic compounds in an actual forensic autopsy case. If GC-PCI-MS/MS is used together with the more established methods of GC-EI-MS and LC-ESI-MS/MS, we believe the forensic toxicology community could be better prepared to deal with the challenges of these ever-changing compounds.