title: Hair analysis following chronic smoked-drugs-of-abuse exposure in adults and their toddler: a case report.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Over the past two decades, the study of chronic cocaine and crack cocaine exposure in the pediatric population has been focused on the potential adverse effects, especially in the prenatal period and early childhood. Non-invasive biological matrices have become an essential tool for the assessment of a long-term history of drug of abuse exposure.
  
  
  METHODS
  We analyze the significance of different biomarker values in hair after chronic crack exposure in a two-year-old Caucasian girl and her parents, who are self-reported crack smokers. The level of benzoylecgonine, the principal metabolite of cocaine, was determined in segmented hair samples (0 cm to 3 cm from the scalp, and > 3 cm from the scalp) following washing to exclude external contamination. Benzoylecgonine was detectable in high concentrations in the child's hair, at 1.9 ng/mg and 7.04 ng/mg, respectively. Benzoylecgonine was also present in the maternal and paternal hair samples at 7.88 ng/mg and 6.39 ng/mg, and 13.06 ng/mg and 12.97 ng/mg, respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Based on the data from this case and from previously published poisoning cases, as well as on the experience of our research group, we conclude that, using similar matrices for the study of chronic drug exposure, children present with a higher cocaine concentration in hair and they experience more serious deleterious acute effects, probably due to a different and slower cocaine metabolism. Consequently, children must be not exposed to secondhand crack smoke under any circumstance.
authors.affiliation: Programa de Recerca en Neurociències, IMIM (Institut de Recerca, Hospital del Mar), Parc de Salut Mar, Barcelona, Spain. 90458@hospitaldelmar.cat.
authors.forename: Esther
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Papaseit
authors.forename: Xavier
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Joya
authors.forename: Marta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Velasco
authors.forename: Ester
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Civit
authors.forename: Pau
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mota
authors.forename: Marta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bertran
authors.forename: Oriol
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Vall
authors.forename: Oscar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Garcia-Algar