Abstract
Recently, various new psychoactive substances (NPSs) have been detected as components of “legal high” products. Synthetic cathinones are one of the most popular classes of NPSs, and are structurally related to the stimulants amphetamine and methamphetamine. In this study, we investigated the differentiation of 2-, 3-, and 4-ring-substituted regioisomers for ethylmethcathinones, fluoromethcathinones, ethylethcathinones and fluoroethcathinones by liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (/mass spectrometry). At the first step, it was difficult to differentiate the regioisomers by product ion spectra for each cathinone group. Therefore, we had to differentiate them by retention times. Under all tested conditions, the 3- and 4-ring-substituted cathinones were not separated by a conventional octadecylsilyl bonded silica gel column, but complete chromatographic separation of all regioisomers was achieved under optimized conditions using a column with a naphthylethyl-bonded stationary phase. Using these conditions, an authentic “legal high” product containing a fluoromethcathinone was analyzed, and the active ingredient was 4-fluoromethcathinone clearly differentiated from 2- and 3-fluoromethcathinone. The proposed method enables the separation of regioisomeric ring-substituted cathinones without the need for pretreatment steps, such as derivatization or purification. To our knowledge, this is the first trial to use the naphthylethyl-bonded column to separate ring-substituted cathinone regioisomers completely. This column seems to have potential to be successfully used for separation of other types of compounds with ring-substituted regioisomer structures.
References
EMCDDA (2016) European drug report. Trends and developments. http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/2637/TDAT16001ENN.pdf. Accessed Dec 2016
EMCDDA-Europol (2015) Annual report on the implementation of council decision 2005/387/JHA. http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/2880/TDAS16001ENN.pdf. Accessed Dec 2016
Ammann D, McLaren JM, Gerostamoulos D, Beyer J (2012) Detection and quantification of new designer drugs in human blood: part 2-designer cathinones. J Anal Toxicol 36:381–389
Glicksberg L, Bryand K, Kerrigan S (2016) Identification and quantification of synthetic cathinones in blood and urine using liquid chromatography-quadrupole/time of flight (LC-Q/TOF) mass spectrometry. J Chromatogr B 1035:91–103
Westphal F, Junge T (2012) Ring positional differentiation of isomeric N-alkylated fluorocathinones by gas chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry. Forensic Sci Int 223:97–105
Kohyama E, Chikumoto T, Tada H, Kitaichi K, Horiuchi T, Ito T (2016) Differentiation of the isomers of N-alkylated cathinones by GC-EI-MS-MS and LC-PDA. Anal Sci 32:831–837
Archer RP (2009) Fluoromethcathinone, a new substance of abuse. Forensic Sci Int 185:10–20
Awad T, Clark CR, DeRuiter J (2006) Chromatographic and mass spectral studies on methoxymethcathinones related to 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine. J Chromatogr Sci 44:155–161
Ondra P, Válka I, Knob R, Ginterová P, Maier V (2016) Analysis of amphetamine-derived designer drugs by gas chromatography with mass spectrometry. J Anal Toxicol 40:78–85
Wahyuni WT, Jinno K (1988) Separation of tocopherols on various chemically bonded phases in microcolumn liquid chromatography. J Chromatogr 448:398–403
Asada A, Doi T, Takeda A, Tagami T, Kawaguchi M, Satsuki Y, Sawabe Y (2015) Identification of analogs of LY2183240 and the LY2183240 2′-isomer in herbal products. Forensic Toxicol 33:311–320
Yang M, Fazio S, Munch D, Drumm P (2005) Impact of methanol and acetonitrile on separations based on π–π interactions with a reversed-phase phenyl column. J Chromatogr A 1097:124–129
Nakazono Y, Tsujikawa K, Kuwayama K, Kanamori T, Iwata YT, Miyamoto K, Kasuya F, Inoue H (2013) Differentiation of regioisomeric fluoroamphetamine analogs by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Forensic Toxicol 31:241–250
Kohyama E, Chikumoto T, Tada H, Kitaichi K, Ito T (2017) Analytical differentiation of quinolinyl- and isoquinolinyl- substituted 1-(5-fluoropentyl)-1H-indole-3-carboxylates: 5F-PB-22 and its ten isomers. Forensic Toxicol 35:56–65. doi: 10.1007/s11419-016-0334-9
Acknowledgements
This study was partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant no. 15K08834.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
There are no financial or other issues that could lead to a conflict of interest.
Ethical approval
This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Takeda, A., Tagami, T., Asada, A. et al. Regioisomeric separation of ring-substituted cathinones by liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry with a naphthylethyl column. Forensic Toxicol 35, 399–407 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11419-016-0351-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11419-016-0351-8