Lam HY, Fiorentin TR, Mohr ALA, Diamond F, Logan BK
Society of Forensic Toxicologist (SOFT)- 2022 Conference MeetingAnticoagulant drugs within the warfarin and superwarfarin class are commonly used as the active ingredient in commercial rodenticides Currently, these drugs are unregulated and commercially available for purchase. As such, these anticoagulants drugs have been implicated in different forensic casework, including suicides, homicides and accidental poisonings. In recent years, these anticoagulant drugs have emerged as toxic adulterants in illicit drugs in United States.
Two major anticoagulant outbreaks in Chicago 2018 and Tampa 2021 have been reported, where synthetic cannabinoids were laced with brodifacoum. Consumers of these laced synthetic cannabinoids products suffered severe adverse effects including spontaneous internal and external bleeding, and some cases resulted in death. The detection and quantification of these compounds in forensic casework is challenging due to the low concentrations of the drugs In addition, these drugs are typically not detected using routine screening workflows. The objective of this research was to develop and validate a quantitative, targeted method to isolate ten anticoagulants from human blood with subsequent analysis by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry.
POSTER PRESENTATION
