Citation

Jain B, Jain R, Kabir A, Zughaibi T, Bajaj A, Sharma S. Food Chem. 2023; 432: e137191.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.foodchem.2023.137191

PMID

37643513

Abstract

Drug-facilitated crimes (DFCs) entail the use of a single drug or a mixture of drugs to render a victim unable. Traditionally, biological samples have been gathered from victims and conducting analysis to establish evidence of drug administration. Nevertheless, the rapid metabolism of various drugs and delays in analysis can impede the identification of such substances. For this, the present article describes a rapid, sustainable, highly efficient and miniaturized protocol for the identification and quantification of three sedative-hypnotic drugs namely diazepam, chlordiazepoxide and ketamine in alcoholic beverages and complex food samples (cream of biscuit, flavoured milk, juice, cake, tea, sweets and chocolate). The methodology involves utilizing fabric phase sorptive extraction (FPSE) to extract diazepam (DZ), chlordiazepoxide (CDP), and ketamine (KET), Subsequently, the extracted sample are subjected to analysis using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Several parameters, including type of membrane, pH, agitation time and speed, ionic strength, sample volume, elution volume and time, and type of elution solvent, were screened and thoroughly optimized. Sol-gel Carbowax 20M (CW-20M) has demonstrated most effective extraction efficiency for the target analytes among all evaluated membranes. Under optimal conditions, the method displayed linearity within the range of 0.3-10 µg mL(-1) (or µg g(-1)), exhibiting a coefficient of determination (R(2)) ranging from 0.996 to 0.999. The limits of detection (LODs) and limits of quantification (LOQs) for liquid samples ranging between 0.020 and 0.069 µg mL(-1) and 0.066-0.22 µg mL(-1), respectively. Correspondingly, the LODs for solid samples ranged from 0.056 to 0.090 µg g(-1), while the LOQs ranged from 0.18 to 0.29 µg g(-1). Notably, the method showcased better precision, with repeatability and reproducibility both below 5% and 10%, respectively. Furthermore, the FPSE-GC-MS method proved effective in determining diazepam (DZ) in forensic food samples connected to drug-facilitated crimes (DFCs). Additionally, the proposed method underwent evaluation for its whiteness using the RGB12 algorithm.

Language: en

Keywords

Food safety; Drug facilitated crime; Fabric phase sorptive extraction; Food forensics; White analytical chemistry