RESUMEN
Illicit drug use is a serious and complex public health problem, not only due to the severity of the health damage but also to the social implications, such as marginalization and drug trafficking. Currently, cocaine (COC) is among the most abused drugs worldwide with about 22 million users. Drug abuse has also been found in women during the pregnancy period, which has shed light on a new group for epidemiology. The diagnosis of COC use in these cases usually depends largely on the mother's reports, which in several cases omit or deny consumption. Therefore, considering physical-chemical methods of sample preparation and exposure biomarkers, the development of analytic toxicological methods can help to confirm drug use during pregnancy. Thus, the objective of the present work was to develop an analytical method based on dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) for the determination of COC analytes, using umbilical cord tissue as an alternative biological matrix, and detection by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Therefore, after optimization, the DLLME method was fully validated for quantification of COC, benzoylecgonine (BZE), cocaethylene (CE), ecgonine (ECG), ecgonine methyl ester (EME) and norcocaine (NorCOC). The limits of detection were between 15 and 25 ng/g, the limits of quantification (LOQ) were 30 ng/g for ECG, and 25 ng/g for the other analytes. Linearity ranged from the LOQ to 1,000 ng/g. Coefficients of variation for intra-assay precision were <18.5%, inter-assay was <8.75%, and bias was <16.4% for all controls. The developed method was applied in 10 suspected positive samples, based on the mother's report and maternal urine screening and confirmation. COC, BZE, ECG, and EME were quantified in 4 umbilical cords with concentrations that ranged from 39.6 to 420.5 ng/g.
RESUMEN
Brazil is the third largest contributor to Green Analytical Chemistry, and there is significant participation of toxicologists in the development and improvement of environmental techniques. Currently, toxicologists have their own strategies and guidelines to promote the reduction/replacement or elimination of solvents, reduce the impacts of derivatization and save time, among other objectives, due to the peculiarities of toxicological analysis. Thus, this review aims to propose the concept of Green Analytical Toxicology and conduct a discussion about its relevance and applications specifically in forensic toxicology, using the microextraction methods developed for the determination of cocaine and its metabolites as examples.
