ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Chem.
Sec. Analytical Chemistry
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fchem.2025.1559279
Rapid GC-MS Method for Screening Seized Drugs in Forensic Investigations: Optimization and Validation
Provisionally accepted
- 1Dubai Police, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
- 2United Arab Emirates University, Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates
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The escalating incidence of drug-related crimes requires rapid and reliable forensic methods for drug screening. This study develops and optimizes a rapid Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) method that significantly reduces the total analysis time from 30 to 10 minutes, facilitating faster judicial processes and law enforcement responses. Enhanced by optimizing temperature programming and operational parameters, the method efficiently shortens the run time while ensuring the accuracy essential for forensic applications. Through systematic validation, the method demonstrated a limit of detection improvement by at least 50% for key substances such as Cocaine and Heroin, achieving detection thresholds as low as 1 µg/mL for Cocaine compared to 2.5 µg/mL with conventional method. Additionally, the method exhibited excellent repeatability and reproducibility with relative standard deviations (RSDs) less than 0.25% for stable compounds under operational conditions. Applied to 20 real case samples from Dubai Police Forensic Labs, the rapid GC-MS method accurately identified diverse drug classes, including synthetic opioids and stimulants, with match quality scores consistently exceeding 90% across tested concentrations. The method effectively reduces forensic backlogs, facilitating faster and more reliable drug screening essential for judicial processes.
Keywords: Seized drugs, GC-MS, screening, Validation, optimization
Received: 12 Jan 2025; Accepted: 28 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Askar, Al Ali, Khalifa, Salem, Alkhuwaildi and SHAH. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: ILTAF SHAH, United Arab Emirates University, Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates
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