Abstract

Ethanol is the most commonly encountered drug in forensic toxicology, with widespread use throughout society. For this reason, it is important that there are a variety of reliable and robust methods to detect and quantify the content of alcohol in blood samples of suspected drink drivers. A common method of detection is gas chromatography with flame ionisation detector, with a number of sample preparation techniques employed. Typically, venous blood is sampled and used in the analysis. However, there is currently no legal specification in the UK of the blood sample source. This study investigates the use of capillary blood as an alternative to venous blood alongside two different sample volumes: 100 and 10 µL. Venous and capillary blood were collected from volunteers who had consumed alcohol. All blood sampling was carried out one hour after cessation of drinking. The results show a statistically significant difference between venous and capillary samples, with an average difference of 3.38 ± 1.99 mg/100 mL at 100 μL and approximately 4.13 ± 2.42 mg/100 mL at 10 μL, respectively. Predominantly, venous blood was detected at higher concentrations than the corresponding capillary samples. The deviations in alcohol samples between venous and capillary blood are consistent with previous studies. However, our research indicates that capillary blood is a viable matrix to test for alcohol, albeit one that underestimates blood-alcohol content in relation to venous sampling. There was no statistically significant difference between the 100 and 10 µL sample preparation methods on an individual basis, which infers that micro-volumes of alcohol are suitable for forensic blood-alcohol analysis.

Highlights

  • Ethanol is a widely used recreational drug worldwide

  • Our results indicate that a 10-fold reduction in volume from 100 to 10 lL produces no statistically significant difference in the measured alcohol value in either venous or capillary blood samples on an individual sample-by-sample basis

  • Our results indicate that the use of micro-sampling and reduced sample volume does not affect the accuracy of alcohol quantitation in blood samples when tested by gas chromatography with flame ionisation detector (GC-FID)

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Summary

Introduction

Ethanol ( known as alcohol or ethyl alcohol) is a widely used recreational drug worldwide. A survey carried out in the UK in 2017 indicated that 57% of respondents admitted to using alcohol recreationally, which equates to approximately 29.2 million people nationwide.[1] Ethanol acts as a depressant on the central nervous system and produces effects of relaxation, sedation, loss of inhibitions and impairment of motor coordination.[2] Due to its effects and prominence in society, drink-driving limits were introduced to improve road safety and reduce road-traffic collisions.[3] Alcohol limits in England and Wales were set at. 80 mg/100 mL of blood, 35 mg/100 mL of breath and 107 mg/100 mL of urine.[4] On 10 April 2015, the statutory option for drink driving was removed

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