| Summary: | 碩士 === 臺北醫學大學 === 藥學系 === 93 === Parallel to the "poppy-seed defense" strategy commonly reported in the United States, donors of urine samples tested positive for opiates in Taiwan often claimed the consumption of Brown Mixture (BM) as the source of the observed morphine and codeine. Since BM contains opium powder, opium tincture, or camphorated opium tincture and is a popular remedy, while heroin use is considered a serious criminal act, the claim of BM use has to be adequately addressed.
The analytical procedure included hydrolysis, trimethylsilylation and GC-MS analysis, monitoring the following ions designated for TMS-derivatized codeine, morphine, and nalorphine (internal standard)：m/z 371, 356, 343；429, 414, 401；455, 440, 414, respectively. The first ion listed for each compound was used for quantitation. A linear relationship was found in the range from 50 to 1500 ng/ml with absolute recovery about 80%. Precision for intraday and interday is from 0.99% to 5.69% and from 0.81% to 3.58%, respectively. Accuracy for intraday and interday is from –3.96% to 2.52% and from –5.33% to 7.84%, respectively.
In this study, BM from eight different manufacturers (tablets and solutions) and urine samples from patients were analyzed for their morphine and codeine contents. The contents of morphine and codeine in tablets are very consistent, but vary considerably in the BM solutions. Morphine concentrations found in urine specimens collected from volunteer patients ingesting BM tablets (or solutions) are always <4000 ng/mL. The following morphine/codeine concentration ratios ([M]/[C]) were observed for urine specimens with morphine concentration ≥ 300 ng/mL：(a) <3.0 for patients ingesting BM solution; (b) >3.0 (mostly >5.0) for patients ingesting BM tablets and alleged heroin users. It appears that (a) BM ingestion (tablet or solution) is unlikely to result in morphine concentration >4000 ng/mL; and (b) [M]/[C] ratio may not be an effective parameter to differentiate heroin use from BM tablet ingestion.
|
|---|
