title: Vitreous humor as an alternative matrix for comprehensive drug screening in postmortem toxicology by liquid chromatography-time-of-flight mass spectrometry.
abstract: Liquid chromatography-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-TOFMS) is an emerging technique in toxicological drug screening. The applicability of vitreous humor as an alternative matrix for drug screening by LC-TOFMS in postmortem investigations was studied by comparison of findings in urine and vitreous humor in 50 autopsy cases. In addition, a cutoff value was determined for 70 drugs of toxicological relevance. The comparison study showed that vitreous humor is well-suited for qualitative screening analysis, although representativeness was not as good as urine because of less frequent metabolite detection. A total of 45 parent compounds and 24 metabolites were identified in vitreous samples; for urine, the figures were 55 and 39, respectively. The mean and median cutoff values were 0.072 and 0.023 mg/L, respectively, which are sufficient for routine casework according to the quantitative data available in the literature.
authors.affiliation: Department of Forensic Medicine, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pelander
authors.forename: Johanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ristimaa
authors.forename: Ilkka
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ojanperä
mesh_terms: D001082:Aqueous Humor / Q000378:metabolism*; D001344:Autopsy; D002853:Chromatography, Liquid; D053593:Forensic Toxicology; D006801:Humans; D013058:Mass Spectrometry; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000652:urine; D015813:Substance Abuse Detection / Q000379:methods*; D016482:Urinalysis
chemical_list: D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations