Documentation of a doxylamine overdose death: quantitation by standard addition and use of three instrumental techniques.
To answer the question, "Is this death due to a drug overdose?" requires at least that the drug be unequivocally identified and a blood concentration reliably determined. The approach taken in this case as standard addition technique and use of three different chromatographic techniques-high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), high performance thin-layer chromatography (HP-TLC) and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). Each of the chromatographies was carried out on the same extract by splitting the residue three ways. HPLC provided a quantitative result which was 1.2 mg/L in blood and HP-TLC and GC/MS confirmed this result with additional quantitative data, information about two metabolites (nordoxylamine and dinordoxylamine) and conclusive identification. Blood nordoxylamine was 0.52 mg/L and doxylamine plus metabolites in urine was 25 mg/L.
Analytic Bio-Chemistries, Feasterville, PA.
T J
TJ
Siek
W A
WA
Dunn
D002138:Calibration; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; D004319:Doxylamine / Q000097:blood* / Q000506:poisoning*; D062787:Drug Overdose / Q000097:blood*; D008401:Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012044:Regression Analysis
D004319:Doxylamine