Key points:
- Researchers developed a more efficient screening process to discover which new “designer drugs” are circulating in the community.
- Using high-resolution mass spectrometry to re-analyze urine samples, researchers identified new synthetic opioids, benzodiazepines, and stimulants that initially eluded identification.
- Using this process on a regular basis can allow clinicians and public health officials to respond more quickly to the emergence of new drugs.
Researchers have developed a more efficient way to discover which new designer drugs are circulating in the community.
In a study, published in Analytical Chemistry, the team shows high-resolution mass spectrometry can be used to analyze urine samples at scale and uncover molecules from emerging designer drugs that conventional testing might miss.
To confirm if a drug is present in a sample, a lab needs to know what they are looking for and obtain that drug in synthetic form. This becomes their reference standard and is used to develop a repeatable test that can accurately determine the substance’s presence.
Designer drugs, which are modified versions of other drugs, have recently proliferated in the unregulated market. Because many these drugs are so new that a reference standard is hard to acquire or may not exist.
In this study, researchers used high-resolution mass spectrometry to re-analyze more than 12,000 urine sample collected in British Columbia (B.C.) from 2019-2022. If any laboratory world has published data about new drug found in these re-analyzed samples, the lab in B.C. can compare its data with theirs to determine which drugs are most likely showing up locally.
The retrospective analysis revealed new synthetic opioids, benzodiazepines, and stimulants that initially eluded identification. For example, a modified version of fentanyl called fluorofentanyl was absent from samples before mid-2022 and then spiked during the final months of the study, indicating that it was introduced to the local drug supply quite suddenly.
“Applying this process on a regular basis will allow us to respond much more quickly to the emergence of new drugs and greatly reduce the time between a drug’s introduction to the community and our ability to test for it in a rigorous way,” said study senior author Aaron Shapiro, professor at University of British Columbia.