Investigation into the functionality of controlled drug denaturing/destruction kits.

CONTEXT: Throughout the UK a large amount of unwanted, expired or patient returned controlled drugs are disposed of every day, in community and hospital pharmacies, veterinary surgeries, hospices, private hospitals and industrial settings. This is mostly achieved through the use of commercially available controlled drug destruction/denaturing kits, but what do these kits actually do to the drug within them? OBJECTIVE: The primary aim of this study was to investigate the effect of six commercially available kits on morphine, a chosen model controlled drug. The secondary aim was to establish if the kits could be adapted to chemically destroy any drug disposed within it. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Morphine was dispensed in to six commercially available controlled drug destruction kits at a known concentration. The instructions on the kits were followed and after 48 h the amount of drug remaining was determined by HPLC. In addition a new kit containing sodium perborate was tested in the same way. RESULTS: Between 78 and 111% of the parent drug was found to still be present in the commercial kits tested after 48 h. In the sodium perborate 5% kit this level fell to 22%. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion all the commercially available CD denaturing kits tested do not destroy the controlled drug (morphine) tested but simply encapsulated it in gel. This means the parent form of the drug is still present and could potentially be recovered and abused. The new kit containing sodium perborate was much more effective in chemically destroying the parent drug but care must be taken in its use.

Detection and identification of drugs and toxicants in human body fluids by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry under data-dependent acquisition control and automated database search.

Systematic toxicological analysis (STA) is aimed at detecting and identifying all substances of toxicological relevance (i.e. drugs, drugs of abuse, poisons and/or their metabolites) in biological material. Particularly, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS) represents a competent and commonly applied screening and confirmation tool. Herein, we present an untargeted liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) assay aimed to complement existing GC/MS screening for the detection and identification of drugs in blood, plasma and urine samples. Solid-phase extraction was accomplished on mixed-mode cartridges. LC was based on gradient elution in a miniaturized C18 column. High resolution electrospray ionization-MS/MS in positive ion mode with data-dependent acquisition control was used to generate tandem mass spectral information that enabled compound identification via automated library search in the "Wiley Registry of Tandem Mass Spectral Data, MSforID". Fitness of the developed LC/MS/MS method for application in STA in terms of selectivity, detection capability and reliability of identification (sensitivity/specificity) was demonstrated with blank samples, certified reference materials, proficiency test samples, and authentic casework samples.