Post-mortem distribution of mephedrone and its metabolites in body fluids and organ tissues of an intoxication case

Abstract

New psychoactive substances (NPS) are substances that continue to appear on the drug market to bypass controlled substance legislation. Mephedrone or 4-methylmethcathinone is becoming the most popular new psychoactive substance among youth as a recreational drug. The present study describes the optimization and validation of a sensitive method that combined clean up procedure and LC–MS/MS technique designed to simultaneously determine the presence of Mephedrone and its two metabolites (normephedrone as active metabolite and dyhidromephedrone) in post-mortem specimens (body fluids and organ tissues). To date, this is the first determination of Mephedrone metabolites in post-mortem specimens. The validated method was applied to a fatal Mephedrone intoxication case. The distribution of the three analytes in different post-mortem matrices was presented. The toxicological results of the studied case are discussed, along with autopsy, histopathological evidence and crime-scene information. The toxicological results presented in the study provide new data relative to mephedrone and the distribution of its metabolites in post-mortem specimens. In our opinion, the metabolite concentration database must be developed because the metabolites may be linked to toxicity. The pattern of parent drug and its metabolites can be helpful in the interpretation of fatal cases involving mephedrone, which will contribute to the currently limited knowledge about mephedrone and metabolites concentrations.