A new potent serotonin 5-HT2A receptor agonist was identified in blotter papers by several state level forensic laboratories in Brazil. The 25I-NBOH is a labile molecule, which fragments into 2C-I when analyzed by routine seized material screening gas chromatography (GC) methods. GC–mass spectrometry (MS), liquid chromatography–quadrupole time-of-flight-MS, and Fourier transform infrared and nuclear magnetic resonance analyses were performed to complete molecular characterization. Individual doses range from 300 to 1000 μg. Despite its being a potent 5-HT2A receptor agonist, 25I-NBOH is neither registered in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) nor classified as a scheduled substance in most countries. Sweden and Brazil seem to be the only countries to control 25I-NBOH. To our knowledge, this is the first scientific report dealing with identification of 25I-NBOH in actual seizures.

25I-NBOH is a novel psychoactive substance (NPS) recently reported to have been found on blotter paper samples seized on the streets of Brazil, used as a replacement for the NBOMes now scheduled in many countries. The presence of this NPS on the street market may go undetected because the most widely and routinely utilised analytical technique for drug sample analyses is gas chromatographymass spectrometry (GC-MS), which can misidentify 25I-NBOH (and indeed the other members of the NBOH series), because of its degradation into 2C-I (and corresponding 2C for the other members of the series) within the injector, unless a derivatization procedure is employed, which is often non-standard. While direct detection of 25I-NBOH under routine GC conditions is still to be achieved, slight adjustments in standard GC methods, including shortening of the solvent delay window, enabled the detection of an additional peak containing 25I-NBOH degradation product's fragmentation ions. Consequently, this secondary early chromatographic peak allowed for the distinction between 25I-NBOH and 2C-I using routine GC-MS without resorting to derivatization (or other analytical processes), thus preventing misidentification of 25I-NBOH as 2C-I. Keywords 25I-NBOH • 2C-I • NPS • Misidentification • Thermal degradation • GC-MS

Purpose This study aimed to validate a modified QuEChERS method followed by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry to determine 79 new psychoactive substances (NPS) and other drugs in blood and urine. Methods Prescription drugs (n = 23), synthetic cathinones (n = 13), phenethylamines (n = 11); synthetic cannabinoids (n = 8), amphetamines (n = 7) and other psychoactive substances (n = 17) were included in the method. 500 µL of biological fluid was extracted with 2 mL of water/ACN (1:1), 500 mg of anhydrous MgSO 4 /NaOAc (4:1) added, followed by a supernatant cleanup with 25 mg of primary secondary amine and 75 mg of anhydrous MgSO 4 . Quantification was done using matrixmatched calibration curves and deuterated internal standards. ResultsThe method was satisfactorily validated for blood and urine at limit of quantifications ranging from 0.4 to 16 ng/ mL, and applied to the analysis of 54 blood (38 postmortem and 16 antemortem) and 16 antemortem urine samples from 68 forensic cases. All urine samples and 59.3% of the blood samples were positive for at least one analyte. Twenty-two analytes were detected in at least one biological sample, including the synthetic cathinones ethylone (222 ng/mL, antemortem blood), eutylone (246 and 446 ng/mL, urine), and N-ethylpentylone (597 and 7.3 ng/mL, postmortem and antemortem blood, respectively). Conclusions The validated method was shown to be suitable for the analysis of blood and urine forensic samples and an important tool to collect information on emerging drug threats and understanding the impact of NPS and other drugs in poisoning cases.

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