Negri P, Krotulski AJ
SCIEXEvery year, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Testing and Research Laboratory publishes a yearly Emerging Threat Report listing the Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS) the agency has seized and analyzed.This concise report is meant to provide an annual snapshot of current and emerging NPS markets in the United States.
As the surge of novel synthetic opioids and other synthetic drug classes continue to pose serious public health and safety problems, timely and comprehensive drug screening approaches are critically needed in the forensic laboratory to quickly and accurately identify these emerging novel substances. The combination of LC separation coupled to tandem mass spectrometry detection (e.g., LC-MS/MS, LC-QTOF-MS) provides forensic investigators the speed and confidence required to reliably identify novel drugs of abuse and other toxicology compounds present in a variety of complex matrices.
In addition, acquisition of accurate mass data and analytespecific MS/MS fragment spectra provides increased confidence in compound identification. More specifically, high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) offers forensic laboratories a powerful tool for the detection and identification of NPS by reliably obtaining comprehensive MS/MS spectral fragment information on every detectable component in the sample at low analyte concentration with high levels of selectivity and sensitivity.
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