Quantitative measurement of synthetic cathinones in oral fluid.

Synthetic cathinones have recently emerged as a substitute for common drugs of abuse. Synthetic cathinones can elicit powerful adverse effects such as delusions, hallucinations and potentially dangerous behavior. To develop a method to analyze 10 synthetic cathinones in oral fluid, we implemented a combined approach of solid-phase extraction and ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The developed analytical procedure was a sensitive, precise and selective method suited for high-throughput toxicological screening of synthetic cathinones. The method was validated using standard parameters including accuracy, precision, linearity, sensitivity, matrix effect and recovery. Human subject samples were analyzed using the developed method to demonstrate the applicability of the method.