CHEMICAL AND TOXICOLOGICAL STUDY OF PHENCYCLIDINE AND DERIVATIVES THEREOF IN BIOLOGICAL MATERIAL

Abstract

According to the report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2020), the number of drug-users aged 12-64 has exceeded 275 million people, which accounts for 5.4% of the globe’s population. The highest number of drug addicts has been registered in the United States of America − 28.6 million; in the European Union – 17.4 million, while Russia accounts for 6 million, with 11.8 million deaths registered annually worldwide, that are directly or indirectly related to drug abuse. Tightening anti-drug measures along with higher demand for drugs from low-income groups of people result in expensive “classical” drugs being replaced with various substitutes, medicines and synthetic drugs, including phencyclidine. Chromatographic methods play a major role in the expert evaluation of narcotic drugs, toxic substances and their metabolic products in biological media, whereas the use of gas and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry allows identifying – with a high reliability level – most compounds that are relevant in terms of analytical and forensic toxicology. This paper offers a comparative analysis and an overview of optimized methods to be employed to detect phencyclidine and its derivatives in biological fluids and tissues. There has also been toxicokinetics and biotransformation of phencyclidine studied, as well as a drip chemical analysis of phencyclidine carried out. The detection of phencyclidine and its derivatives through chromatographic methods has been improved. The obtained outcomes can be used for differentiating phencyclidine and its derivatives in forensic chemical and chemical-toxicological studies of biological material.