Drugs for youth via Internet and the example of mephedrone.

Recently a new class of "designer drugs" has emerged on the drugs abuse market, known as "legal highs". Such drugs are legal to use and possess, and legal to supply. Mephedrone, a central nervous system stimulant, is the most widely experienced "legal high". This review presents any available information about psychoactive properties, safety profile, clinical data, and legislation of the new "legal high" and emphasizes the role of Internet with mephedrone's expansion. Available data were collected by various literature search engines and World Wide Web. All valuable information about psychoactive properties, safety profile and clinical data for mephedrone and its use as "legal high" were managed to spot and summarise. Internet plays a significant role for the distribution of "legal highs", becoming one of the major "drug market". Adolescents and young adults who are curious about drugs may search on the Internet and thereby become exposed to thousands of sites that expound upon the positive effects of drugs and downplay or deny any negative effects. Use of mephedrone is mainly a youth phenomenon. The hazardous side-effects are strong desire to re-dose, uncomfortable changes in body temperature and heart rate, hallucinations and psychosis.

Validated GC/MS method for the simultaneous determination of clozapine and norclozapine in human plasma. Application in psychiatric patients under clozapine treatment.

A sensitive and specific GC/MS method for the determination of clozapine (CLZ) and its major metabolite norclozapine (NCLZ), in plasma has been developed, optimized and validated. Specimen preparation includes solid-phase extraction of both analytes using Bond-Elut Certify cartridge and further derivatization with TFAA. Clozapine-d8 was used as internal standard for the determination of CLZ and NCLZ. Limits of detection were 0.45 ng/mL for CLZ and 1.59 ng/mL for NCLZ, while limits of quantification were 1.37 ng/mL for CLZ and 4.8 ng/mL for NCLZ, as calculated by the calibration curves. The calibration curves were linear up to 600 ng/mL for CLZ and NCLZ. Absolute recovery ranged from 82.22% to 95.35% for both analytes. Intra- and interday accuracy was less than 7.13% and --12.52%, respectively, while intra- and interday precision was between 9.47% and 12.07%, respectively, for CLZ and NCLZ. The method covers all therapeutic range and proved suitable for the determination of CLZ and NCLZ not only in psychiatric patients but also in forensic cases with clozapine implication.

Spice drugs as a new trend: mode of action, identification and legislation.

The present review highlights the existing monitoring and legislation status of synthetic cannabinoids in "Spice" products and alert research community about the identification and risk assessment problems of these compounds. Available data were collected by various literature search engines. All valuable information about psychoactive properties, safety profile, clinical data and detection problems for synthetic cannabinoids and their use as "herbal highs" were managed to spot and summarise. "Spice" contains synthetic cannabinoids that bind to cannabinnoid-like receptors and they are stronger than natural cannabis. Chronic abuse of "Spice" has linked with signs of addiction syndrome and withdrawal symptoms similar to syndromes observed in cannabis abuse. These cannabinoids can be considered as new products to be added to the list of "designer drugs". Although it remains unclear where and how the actual production of the herbal mixtures takes place, it is evident that producers are purposely risk the health of consumers to skim high profits. Only recently a number of countries in Europe, as well as in US and Canada banned the use of these substances. The difficulty in identification of related compounds leads to the necessity for the availability of reference standards in order to aid toxicological analyses.