Citation

Saito T, Tsuji T, Namera A, Morita S, Nakagawa Y. Forensic Toxicol. 2022; 40(2): 403-406.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s11419-022-00618-w

PMID

36454407

Abstract

This study aimed to compare whole blood and serum concentrations of quetiapine in acute poisoning cases. Authentic whole blood and respective serum samples were routinely collected from patients diagnosed with blood poisoning at our University Hospital. Accordingly, whole blood and serum paired samples from nine patients (one male and eight female patients) were analyzed for quetiapine using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Quetiapine concentrations in whole blood and serum samples ranged widely from 5.4 to 2780 ng/mL and 9.9 to 2500 ng/mL, respectively. The whole blood/serum concentration ratio was 0.5-1.1 and increased together with an increase in whole blood and serum quetiapine concentrations. The ratio was reversed at around 2500 ng/mL to > 1. Our findings suggest that whole blood concentrations are more useful than serum concentrations in diagnosing quetiapine poisonings.

Language: en

Keywords

Acute quetiapine poisoning; Diagnosis; Therapeutic drug concentrations; Whole blood/serum concentration ratios