This report details the toxicology profile of victims of drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) in New Zealand from 2015 to 2018. This study represents all of the toxicology results for DFSA cases in New Zealand during this time period, of which there were 161 cases. Blood and urine samples were screened for legal and illicit drugs in addition to testing for alcohol and correlating alcohol concentration with sampling delay. Our results indicate that increased delay in sampling time resulted in a corresponding decrease in alcohol concentration. In victims who had declared alcohol use but of which none was detected, the average sampling time was 14 hours for blood and 17 hours for urine, which is in excess of the average sampling delay for even the lowest alcohol-positive samples. The most frequently detected alcohol concentration was in the range of 51–80 mg/100 mL for blood and 121–200 mg/100 mL for urine with an average sampling time of 8.5 and 6.5 hours, respectively. We also examined acetone concentrations in alcohol-positive samples, and our results indicate that 82% of blood alcohol-positive samples contained acetone at concentrations between 5 and 10 mg/L and 68% of alcohol-positive urine samples contained acetone at a concentration >20 mg/L. It may be that the nature of sexual assault affects an individual’s metabolism of alcohol and results in increased acetone production. Cannabis was the most commonly detected illicit drug, followed by methamphetamine. In relation to medicinal drugs, there was a high usage of antidepressants and antipsychotics, suggesting the victims may have been people of vulnerable personality. Based on case information, it does not appear there are many cases where stupefaction by unknown administration of a drug has occurred, instead loss of consent through voluntary alcohol and drug consumption is more common and poses a greater risk than surreptitious drug administration.
Ethanol is the most commonly encountered drug in forensic toxicology, with widespread use throughout society. For this reason, it is important that there are a variety of reliable and robust methods to detect and quantify the content of alcohol in blood samples of suspected drink drivers. A common method of detection is gas chromatography with flame ionisation detector, with a number of sample preparation techniques employed. Typically, venous blood is sampled and used in the analysis. However, there is currently no legal specification in the UK of the blood sample source. This study investigates the use of capillary blood as an alternative to venous blood alongside two different sample volumes: 100 and 10 µL. Venous and capillary blood were collected from volunteers who had consumed alcohol. All blood sampling was carried out one hour after cessation of drinking. The results show a statistically significant difference between venous and capillary samples, with an average difference of 3.38 ± 1.99 mg/100 mL at 100 μL and approximately 4.13 ± 2.42 mg/100 mL at 10 μL, respectively. Predominantly, venous blood was detected at higher concentrations than the corresponding capillary samples. The deviations in alcohol samples between venous and capillary blood are consistent with previous studies. However, our research indicates that capillary blood is a viable matrix to test for alcohol, albeit one that underestimates blood-alcohol content in relation to venous sampling. There was no statistically significant difference between the 100 and 10 µL sample preparation methods on an individual basis, which infers that micro-volumes of alcohol are suitable for forensic blood-alcohol analysis.
Medical-grade poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) is widely employed in the fabrication of intraocular lenses (IOLs), but suffers from opacification, a postoperative complication that leads to the failure of the implanted intraocular lenses. The opacification occurs when inorganic-based deposits accumulate on the surface of the IOL and are prevalent in hydrophilic materials. Here, the surface of medical-grade PMMA has been fluorinated by sulphur hexafluoride (SF 6 ) plasma treatment to increase surface hydrophobicity thus improving the material lifetime in optical applications. Hydrophobic properties of the treated PMMA were investigated by means of contact angle measurements, while chemical modification was assessed by X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR/FTIR) spectroscopy. Surface morphological changes due to possible etching effects were investigated by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). The transparency of the treated PMMA was assessed by UV/VIS spectroscopy. Finally, the influence of the plasma treatment on the inorganic salts deposition was investigated by immersion in Simulated Aqueous Humour (SAH), followed by XPS analysis. The modified samples showed less deposition on the surface than the unmodified sample, moreover, a decrease of the transmittance in the UV-violet range (300-430 nm) was detected, open the possibility of interesting applications of this treatment for the creation of a UV filter in ophthalmic optical devices.
Ethanol is the most commonly used recreational drug worldwide. This study describes the development and validation of a headspace gas chromatography flame ionisation detection (HS-GC-FID) method using dual columns and detectors for simultaneous separation and quantitation. The use of a dual-column, dual-detector HS-GC-FID to quantitate ethanol is a common analytical technique in forensic toxicology; however, most analytical systems utilise pressure-balance injection rather than a simplified gas-tight syringe, as per this technique. This study is the first to develop and validate a technique that meets the specifications of the United Kingdom’s requirements for road traffic toxicology testing using a Shimadzu GC-2014 gas-tight syringe. The calibration ranged from 10 to 400 mg/100 mL, with a target minimum linearity of r2 > 0.999, using tertiary butanol as the internal standard marker. The method has an expanded uncertainty at 99.73% confidence of 3.64% at 80 mg/100 mL, which is the blood alcohol limit for drink driving in England and Wales. In addition, at 200 mg%—the limit at which a custodial sentence may be imposed on the defendant—the expanded uncertainty was 1.95%. For both the 80 mg% and 200 mg% concentrations, no bias was present in the analytical method. This method displays sufficient separation for other alcohols, such as methanol, isopropanol, acetaldehyde, and acetone. The validation of this technique complies with the recommended laboratory guidelines set out by United Kingdom and Ireland Association of Forensic Toxicologists (UKIAFT), the recently issued Laboratory 51 guidelines by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS), and the criteria set out by the California Code of Regulations (CCR), 17 CCR § 1220.1.
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