The new test makes detecting drug abuse faster, easier and cheaper, and could give authorities the boost they need to keep up with trends in drug use.
A new test has been developed to detect even trace amounts club drugs like ketamine in urine and plasma. This could help authorities keep up with ever-changing trends in drug use. The new test makes detecting drug abuse faster, easier and cheaper, and could give authorities the boost they need to keep up with trends in drug use, according to the researchers.
‘Ketamine is a popular club drug, which causes the users to hallucinate. It works as a sedative, provides pain relief and causes memory loss.’
"These drugs are difficult to analyze -- we see a lot of versatility in the molecules and new drugs are appearing almost every month," said lead author of the study Eugenia Gallardo from University of Beira Interior in Portugal. "Analytical methods for detecting drugs in biological samples play a decisive role, and their reliability is a matter of great significance in forensic and clinical toxicology," Gallardo said.
One widely used club drug is ketamine -- traditionally an animal tranquilizer -- which causes users to hallucinate. Used as a date rape drug in recent years, ketamine works as a sedative, provides pain relief and causes memory loss.
When people with ketamine intoxication attend hospital emergency services, their symptoms can be mistaken easily for alcohol intoxication, resulting in them being given the wrong treatment.
The new test uses a method called gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS), which is often used in drug detection, fire investigation and environmental analysis.
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Using the new method, they could detect amounts of the drug as low as five nanograms per milliliter.
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The study was published in the Journal of Chromatography B.
Source-IANS