Recent Advances in Chromatographic Methods to Detect Drugs of Abuse in Alternative Biological Matrices

In recent years, many studies have been developed with the aim of improving drug detection in both conventional specimens and alternative biological matrices. A large number of drug abuse studies, forensic toxicology analyses, drugs in the workplace and even in doping control in sports activities related to drug detection in biological samples have been reported in the literature. The interest in the development and optimization of analytical techniques to detect drugs of abuse in different specimens is explained by the several possibilities and information that they can provide. Conventional samples such as urine and blood and more recently, saliva and sweat, are of fundamental importance whenever recent exposure to drugs is under investigation. Human keratinized tissues such as hair and nails are especially important for obtaining data of chronic long-term exposure with the great advantage of being collected in a non-invasive way. Meconium can be a useful biological sample to evaluate fetal drug exposure following maternal drug use. This paper reviews chromatographic procedures for determination of amphetamines, cannabinoids, opiates, nicotine, cocaine and alcohol in alternative biological matrices. Gas chromatographic and liquid chromatographic procedures with different detectors (including mass spectrometry) and sample preparation techniques such as liquid-liquid extraction (LLE), solid phase extraction (SPE) and solid phase microextraction (SPME) were considered.