Abstract

Abstract Benzodiazepines (BZD) are widely used as pharmaceuticals in medicine. However, due to psychostimulatory effect of BZD, in the last decade, they are more and more often used as drugs of abuse. These compounds produce similar effects to classical illicit drugs and are sold as “legal” alternatives to them as new psychoactive substances (NPS). Currently new BZD, named designer benzodiazepines (DBZD), are synthesized each year by a simple modification of registered drug structure or their metabolites. The misuse and abuse of benzodiazepines has become an increasing problem in many countries. Due to this phenomenon there is a strong need to develop new analytical methods for the determination of a whole range of substances in biological specimens for forensic toxicology. A rapid, sensitive and robust GC-MS/MS-based method with a simple liquid-liquid extraction for the determination of 10 benzodiazepines in whole blood samples was developed. The assay achieved satisfactory validation parameters, such as: inter-day accuracy (91.8–118.6 %), and precision (2.8–14.9%). The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) were in the range of 0.02-0.53ng/mL and 1-2 ng/mL, respectively. The developed procedure can be widely applicable for rapid screening of new drugs of abuse in forensic or clinical cases.

Authors (3)