Detection of aspirin traces in blood by means of surface‐enhanced Raman scattering spectroscopy

Abstract

AbstractAspirin being freely available as an over the counter drug has a high overdose risk and can cause severe health symptoms. The methods used in clinics for the detection of such drugs (pharmaceuticals) in bodily fluids are mostly based on liquid chromatography and mass spectroscopy. These methods are known to be precise; however, they both require long and laborious sample preparation; thus, it takes time to acquire the required information. Because in the case of an overdose, the time has high importance, and faster methods would be beneficial. This work presents an application of a Surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopic method for the detection of salicylic acid as a metabolite of aspirin in the blood serum of the patient under examination. In this research, the various colloidal solutions were employed for the preparation of SERS active substrates. The choice of the most efficient colloidal solution and the challenges of collecting SERS spectra of whole blood or its components are discussed. The spectra of both the model and the real‐life blood samples containing metabolite of aspirin were collected with a Fourier transform Raman spectrometer. The analysis of the collected spectra revealed that label‐free SERS can be used for the detection of salicylic acid with concentration down to 3 mM in blood serum corresponding to consumption of at least eight standard pills of aspirin (equivalent to mild toxicity). The proposed diagnostic method could be applied faster than the standard methods and could allow sensitive and fast diagnosis of aspirin consumption in the human blood.