Hair analysis of chronic therapeutic drugs : A new usage of hair as therapeutic note

1997 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 07457119
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Legal medicine
• Research Institution: FUKUOKA UNIVERSITY
• Principal Investigator: KASHIMURA Seiichi Fukuoka University, Medical School, Professor, 医学部, 教授 (70004710)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): HARA Kenji Fukuoka University, Medical School, Assistant, 医学部, 助手 (00090738) ; KAGEURA Mitsuyoshi Fukuoka University, Medical School, Professor, 医学部, 教授 (40037594)
• Project Period (FY): 1995 – 1997
• Keywords: Chronic disease / Hair Analysis / Drugs / Drug-abuse / Gas chromatography / Mass spectrometry / Therapeutic history

Research Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find indivisual chronic disease by historically analyzing drugs in hair. We mostly studied on developing analytical procedures for detecting lower levels of drugs in limited samples in high sensitivity and high accuracy. High sensitive detedction could be obtained by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). However, unclear mass spectra were obtained by conventional procedures. By our devised method for analyzing mainly methampletamine, some clear mass spectra were practically obtained. By using this method, this project was developed. As a new method, heptafluoro-n-butylation on a solid-phase column (Exterlut) was systematized. After alkaline-digestion and pH-adjustment, the hair sample was applied on to an extracting column. Then, the derivative extraction was performed by pouring n-hexane containing heptafluoro-n-butyryl chroride. After condensation, the sample was analyzed by GC-MS.By using this method, more than 100 samples collected from cadavers were studied in detail on filing analytical data. By now, methamphetamine, amphetamine, acetaminophen, desmethyl-promethazine (promethazine's metabolite), dibenz-azepine (carbamazepine's metabolite) were listed as drug-related compounds. In cases of metahmphetamines and acetaminophen, their quantitative assays were provided by using deuterated analogues. The quantitative methods were satisfactory to practical analyzes, in which 10 pieces of 1 cm-long sectioned hair were used. In some case studied, drug-distribution (change in drug-concentration from hair-root) in hair could estimate therapeutic history. Some biogenic chemicals were characteristically detected in hair. So that, we are studying on relationship between biogenic chemicals and their related metabolic disease. The GC-MS data from samples obtained by this sample preparation was very clear. Consequently, this method can be used for practical hair analyzes for hair-drugs from chronic drug-users.