RT Journal Article
T1 Determination of antidepressants and benzodiazepines in paired hair and nail samples
A1 Cobo Golpe, María
A1 Castro Ríos, Ana de
A1 Cruz Landeira, Angelines
A1 Páramo Fernández, Mario
A1 López-Rivadulla Lamas, Manuel
A1 Lendoiro Belío, Elena
K1 Antidepressant
K1 Benzodiazepine
K1 Hair
K1 Nail
K1 LC-MS/MS
AB Hair and nails are keratinized matrices that can be used in Toxicology as matrices for the long-term detection of substances. Whereas hair is an established matrix with decades of use in this field, nails have been less studied, especially including a comparison to hair samples. Specifically in the case of antidepressant and benzodiazepine drugs, very few publications analyzing these drugs in nail samples exist as of yet. For this reason, in the present study a method for the detection of 12 antidepressant and benzodiazepine drugs in hair and nail samples was developed. Samples were decontaminated with 3 washes of dichloromethane, and 25 or 30 mg of hair and nails, respectively, were pulverized. Then, the samples were incubated with 1.5 mL water:ACN (50:50, v/v) with horizontal agitation for 90 min. The supernatant was evaporated and reconstituted in 200 µL of methanol and 2 mL of 2% FA in water, submitted to solid phase extraction (SPE) using Oasis MCX cartridges and analyzed by LC-MS/MS. The method was satisfactorily validated in nail and hair samples for the following parameters: linearity, LOD (0.005–0.02 ng/mg), LOQ (0.01–0.02 ng/mg), selectivity, carryover, accuracy, imprecision, matrix effect, extraction efficiency, process efficiency and autosampler stability. Matched fingernail, toenail and hair samples were obtained from 21 patients under treatment with any of the studied drugs and analyzed with the developed method. The most frequently detected drugs were venlafaxine (n = 11), trazodone (n = 6), zolpidem (n = 5), alprazolam (n = 5) and nordiazepam (n = 5). Concentrations in hair, fingernails and toenails, respectively, were 44.31 ng/mg, 8.05–43.35 ng/mg and 7.02–22.69 ng/mg for venlafaxine; 5.40–19.08 ng/mg, 0.13–1.00 ng/mg and 0.42–1.04 ng/mg for trazodone; 13.86 ng/mg, 5.19 ng/mg and 9.11 ng/mg for fluoxetine; 7.42 ng/mg, 1.85 ng/mg and 0.03–2.81 ng/mg for sertraline; 0.40–1.42 ng/mg, 0.12 ng/mg and 0.16 ng/mg for zolpidem; and 0.02–0.11 ng/mg, 0.07–1.07 ng/mg and 0.05 ng/mg for alprazolam for the patients under active treatment. Hair concentrations were higher than nail concentrations for most drugs in patients under active treatment, with the exception of diazepam (n = 1; 0.12 ng/mg in hair and 0.41 ng/mg in fingernails). Fingernail concentrations were lower than toenail concentrations in patients under active treatment in most compared cases. Comparison of fingernails and toenails of a patient with antifungal treatment did not show an observable effect in concentrations
PB Elsevier
YR 2021
FD 2021
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/27330
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/27330
LA eng
NO Forensic Science International 326 (2021) 110935
NO M. Cobo and E. Lendoiro thank Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria, Xunta de Galicia, for their predoctoral contract (ED481A-2019/021) and postdoctoral contract (ED481D-2019/025). The authors also wish to thank the Xunta de Galicia (Galicia, Spain) for the Competitive Reference Groups Help (ED431C 2021/35)
DS Minerva
RD 24 abr 2026