Trace residue identification, characterization, and longitudinal monitoring of the novel synthetic opioid β-U10, from discarded drug paraphernalia.

Abstract

Empirical data regarding dynamic alterations in illicit drug supply markets in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the potential for introduction of novel drug substances and/or increased poly-drug combination use at the "street" level, that is, directly proximal to the point of consumption, are currently lacking. Here, a high-throughput strategy employing ambient ionization-mass spectrometry is described for the trace residue identification, characterization, and longitudinal monitoring of illicit drug substances found within >6,600 discarded drug paraphernalia (DDP) samples collected during a pilot study of an early warning system for illicit drug use in Melbourne, Australia from August 2020 to February 2021, while significant COVID-19 lockdown conditions were imposed. The utility of this approach is demonstrated for the de novo identification and structural characterization of β-U10, a previously unreported naphthamide analog within the "U-series" of synthetic opioid drugs, including differentiation from its α-U10 isomer without need for sample preparation or chromatographic separation prior to analysis. Notably, β-U10 was observed with 23 other drug substances, most commonly in temporally distinct clusters with heroin, etizolam, and diphenhydramine, and in a total of 182 different poly-drug combinations. Longitudinal monitoring of the number and weekly "average signal intensity" (ASI) values of identified substances, developed here as a semi-quantitative proxy indicator of changes in availability, relative purity and compositions of street level drug samples, revealed that increases in the number of identifications and ASI for β-U10 and etizolam coincided with a 50% decrease in the number of positive detections and an order of magnitude decrease in the ASI for heroin.

• Authors: Henry West, John L Fitzgerald, Katherine L Hopkins, Michael G Leeming, Matthew DiRago, Dimitri Gerostamoulos, Nicolas Clark, Paul Dietze, Jonathan M White, James Ziogas, Gavin E Reid
• Journal: Drug testing and analysis (Drug Test Anal) Vol. 14 Issue 9 Pg. 1576-1586 (Sep 2022) ISSN: 1942-7611 [Electronic] England
• PMID: 35562123 (Publication Type: Journal Article)
• Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Drug Testing and Analysis published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Chemical References

• Analgesics, Opioid
• Illicit Drugs
• Heroin

Topics

• Analgesics, Opioid (analysis)
• COVID-19 (epidemiology)
• Communicable Disease Control
• Heroin (analysis)
• Humans
• Illicit Drugs (analysis)
• Pandemics
• Pilot Projects
• Substance-Related Disorders