Detection of some pain managing drugs in bone, bone marrow and hair [human and experimental study]

ABSTRACT

Detection of morphine, fentanyl, and tramadol in human hair and in hair, bone and bone marrow of rats was done using high pressure liquid chromatography [HPKC]. Forty participants were divided into 4 groups control, morphine, tramadol, and fentanyl group. Hair samples were taken after 7 days of exposure to the tested drugs. The animal pat of the experiment consisted of 80 rats. The first 40 rats were divided into 4 subgroups [10 rats each]. The first subgroup was injected with saline IP as a control group, the second subgroup was injected with morphine 20mg/kg SC. The 3[rd] subgroup was injected with fentanyl 60micro g/kg IP and the 4[th] one was injected with tramadol 20mg/kg IP. Hair specimens were collected ten days after injection. The other forty rats were divided into 4 subgroups treated with the same drug doses of the first 40 rats, but morphine and tramadol groups were scarificed after 1 hour and fentanyl group was scarificed after 20 minutes. Femora diaphysis and bone marrow were collected from each sacrificed rat and frozen. After extraction; HPLC was used to evaluate if these drugs could be detected in these tissues after exposure to single therapeutic doses or not. Results showed that all control groups gave negative results. Morphine, fentanyl and tramadol were detected in human hair at levels 20-123pg/mg, 0.6-1.3 and 1.23-4.23 ng/mg respectively. In rats; morphine was detected at level 0.03-0.53, 4.39-12.31 and 9.31-31.20 ng/mg in hair, bone and bone marrow of rats respectively. Fentanyl was detected at level 1.9-6.20, 5.35-22.36 and 18.22-53.49 ng/mg while tramadol was detected at level 1.27-3.92, 9.6-21.6, and 22.62 to 51.31 ng/mg in hair, bone and bone marrow respectively. This study confirmed that morphine, fentanyl and tramadol are detectable even after single use in hair, bone and bone marrow