Use of a newly-developed portable capillary electrophoresis analyser to detect drugs of abuse in oral fluid: A case study

Abstract

The aim of the current study was to develop and validate an analytical method to determine whether drugs of abuse (DOA) were present in oral fluid (OF) using a newly-developed, portable capillary electrophoresis (CE) instrument coupled to a deep ultra-violet fluorescence detector (FD). The performance of this portable CE-FD DOA analyser was tested at the Weekend Festival Baltic (Pärnu, Estonia) between 2016 and 2018 as well as on the roadside OF samples collected by the police. The study reported 128 analysed cases in which persons were allegedly found to have been under the influence of DOA. The samples were analysed for amphetamine (AMP), methamphetamine (METH), 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA), 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA), 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-ethylamphetamine (MDEA), cocaine (COC) and cocaethylene (COET). Subsequent toxicological reports revealed that 26% cases were negative, and 74% were positive. The most frequently detected and quantified DOA was MDMA (68 cases, 62%). A comparative study was conducted to validate the accuracy of using the CE-FD DOA analyser versus classic high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI-MS). Diagnostic statistics for CE-FD DOA were also evaluated and were higher than 99.5%. In addition, all zeta-scores were lower than 2 when both methods were compared, showing that the CE-FD analyser can be implemented as a reliable, sensitive and convenient tool for roadside and workplace testing for DOA.