Citation

Nguyen TA, Pham TN, Ta TT, Nguyen XT, Nguyen TL, Le TH, Koenka IJ, Sáiz J, Hauser PC, Mai TD. Sci. Justice 2015; 55(6): 481-486.

Affiliation

Centre for Environmental Technology and Sustainable Development (CETASD), Hanoi University of Science, Nguyen Trai Street 334, Hanoi, Viet Nam. Electronic address: maithanhduc83@gmail.com.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Forensic Science Society, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.scijus.2015.09.001

PMID

26654084

Abstract

A simple and inexpensive method for the identification of four substituted amphetamines, namely, 3,4-methylenedioxy methamphetamine (MDMA), methamphetamine (MA), 3,4-methylenedioxy amphetamine (MDA) and 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-ethylamphetamine (MDEA) was developed using an in-house constructed semi-automated portable capillary electrophoresis instrument (CE) with capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection (C(4)D). Arginine 10mM adjusted to pH4.5 with acetic acid was found to be the optimal background electrolyte for the CE-C(4)D determination of these compounds. The best detection limits achieved with and without a sample preconcentration process were 10ppb and 500ppb, respectively. Substituted amphetamines were found in different seized illicit club drug tablets and urine samples collected from different suspected users. Good agreement between results from CE-C(4)D and those with the confirmation method (GC-MS) was achieved, with correlation coefficients for the two pairs of data of more than 0.99.

Language: en