The consumption of drugs (both licit and illicit) is ubiquitous in modern societies, and it has become a serious public health problem with consequences for the individuals, their families and the community as a whole. Indeed, the most recent report from the UNODC reflects an increase of the problematic abusers from 30.5 million in the previous year to 35 million. Recently, the appearance of new psychoactive substances has become particularly relevant, with several reports of acute intoxications and deaths being issued. For these reasons, developing and validating new analytical methods is mandatory in order to efficiently face those problems, allowing laboratories to be one step ahead. These methods, including new trends in sample preparation and instrumentation, will allow drug detection of novel compounds, and extremely low concentrations. In addition, those analytical techniques are of use in the determination of legal drugs as well, since they may also have clinical or forensic implications.
Current trends in bioanalysis require the development of novel analytical procedures, and these include efficient sample collection procedures and adequate sample preparation protocols, in order to maximize compound detection, since these are often present at trace levels. Research laboratories should be aware that the number of substances possibly present in a sample may be high, and as such efficient multi-analyte methods are mandatory. The target of this Research Topic is to present novel chromatographic methods using various sample collection and sample preparation techniques for the analysis of several classes of compounds of interest, with applications in analytical sciences, such as chemistry, toxicology and doping control.
Recent advances in drugs of abuse testing in biological matrices will be addressed in this topic. These will include, but will not be limited to, chromatographic and spectrometric techniques, and will focus on the development of new approaches, as well as on sample preparation techniques, namely miniaturized and environmentally friendly approaches.
Therefore, submissions that deal with the development of new methodologies will be welcomed, for example:
a) Analytical approaches to determine drugs of abuse and metabolites in biological specimens;
b) New trends in sample preparation and analytical determinations;
c) Methods for therapeutic drugs determination.
The consumption of drugs (both licit and illicit) is ubiquitous in modern societies, and it has become a serious public health problem with consequences for the individuals, their families and the community as a whole. Indeed, the most recent report from the UNODC reflects an increase of the problematic abusers from 30.5 million in the previous year to 35 million. Recently, the appearance of new psychoactive substances has become particularly relevant, with several reports of acute intoxications and deaths being issued. For these reasons, developing and validating new analytical methods is mandatory in order to efficiently face those problems, allowing laboratories to be one step ahead. These methods, including new trends in sample preparation and instrumentation, will allow drug detection of novel compounds, and extremely low concentrations. In addition, those analytical techniques are of use in the determination of legal drugs as well, since they may also have clinical or forensic implications.
Current trends in bioanalysis require the development of novel analytical procedures, and these include efficient sample collection procedures and adequate sample preparation protocols, in order to maximize compound detection, since these are often present at trace levels. Research laboratories should be aware that the number of substances possibly present in a sample may be high, and as such efficient multi-analyte methods are mandatory. The target of this Research Topic is to present novel chromatographic methods using various sample collection and sample preparation techniques for the analysis of several classes of compounds of interest, with applications in analytical sciences, such as chemistry, toxicology and doping control.
Recent advances in drugs of abuse testing in biological matrices will be addressed in this topic. These will include, but will not be limited to, chromatographic and spectrometric techniques, and will focus on the development of new approaches, as well as on sample preparation techniques, namely miniaturized and environmentally friendly approaches.
Therefore, submissions that deal with the development of new methodologies will be welcomed, for example:
a) Analytical approaches to determine drugs of abuse and metabolites in biological specimens;
b) New trends in sample preparation and analytical determinations;
c) Methods for therapeutic drugs determination.