Oxycodone Concentrations and Metabolic Ratios in Femoral Blood from Fatal Intoxications and Other Causes of Death using LC–MS-MS (original) (raw)

Journal of Analytical Toxicology

Abstract

Oxycodone is an opioid with strong analgesic effects widely used to treat acute and chronic pain. Interpretation of oxycodone concentrations in postmortem cases is complicated due to tolerance and overlapping concentrations for fatal and non-fatal levels. In this study, our aim was to develop and validate a method for oxycodone and its three metabolites: noroxycodone, oxymorphone, and noroxymorphone in postmortem femoral blood. Our goal was to define reference concentrations for intoxications and non-intoxications, and investigate metabolic ratios in different causes of death. A rapid LC–MS-MS method using protein precipitated postmortem blood was developed. LLOQ was 0.005 μg/g blood for all analytes, ULOQ was 1.0 μg/g for oxycodone and noroxycodone, and 0.25 μg/g for oxymorphone and noroxymorphone. The method displayed high precision (3.3–7.7%) and low bias (−0.3–12%). In total, 192 cases were analysed and concentrations ranged from 0.005–13 μg/g for oxycodone, 0.005–2.0 μg/g for n...

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