Gao J, Xu B, Yang R, Zhang H. Screening strategy for ketamine-based new psychoactive substances using fragmentation characteristics from high resolution mass spectrometry.
Forensic Sci Int 2023;
347:111677. [PMID:
37028217 DOI:
10.1016/j.forsciint.2023.111677]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/28/2022] [Revised: 03/29/2023] [Accepted: 04/03/2023] [Indexed: 04/08/2023]
Abstract
Recreational designer drugs called new psychoactive substances (NPS) are emerging and pose enormous risks to public health. Detection of recently discovered or unreported NPS remains a huge challenge by using traditional targeted mass spectrometry methods. Here a novel screening strategy was developed to detect both known and novel analogs of NPS based on fragmentation characteristics from liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS). The HRMS fragmentation pathway of one selected NPS family was investigated to form a database containing predicted drugs as well as their mass characteristics. During the study, an unexpected substituent effect was found to distinguish geometric isomers. Seventy-eight seized samples were analyzed using this strategy, four ketamine-based NPS were detected and three of them were newly marketed. The substituent effect predicted the position of their phenylic substituent, the results were confirmed by NMR.
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