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Rapid and highly selective GC/MS/MS detection of heroin and its metabolites in hair
A Polettini1, A Groppi, M Montagna
1Institute of Legal Medicine, University of Pavia, Italy.
Abstract:
A direct treatment of methanol-washed hair with a silylating solution is proposed to extract heroin, O-6-monoacetylmorphine, morphine, acetylcodeine, and codeine, obtaining the simultaneous derivatization of the hydroxylated metabolites and reducing potential sample contamination. Analysis is performed by capillary gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (GC/MS/MS) using multiple selected reaction monitoring. Owing to the selectivity and sensitivity of the GC/MS/MS analysis, and to the extremely simple treatment of the sample, the method fulfils the requirements of both clinical and forensic diagnosis of heroin use.
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