With the introduction of radioimmunoassay (RIA) techniques, it has become toxicologically possible to determine drug concentrations in postmortem vitreous humor. This study demonstrates and confirms this toxicological feasibility. In 49 medical examiner's drug related cases, postmortem tissue levels of morphine, barbiturates, and methadone were compared to the vitreous humor.
In recent years radioimmunoassay has provided the toxicologist with a rapid, simple way to identify and quantitate drugs of abuse. This paper deals with an evaluation of a radioimmunoassay for methadone.
In 1967 a routine alcohol determination was performed on the brain and blood of a 43-year-old male (HVB) who had been found unconscious, lying at the foot of a stairway in his home. He had sustained a fracture of the skull and survived nine hours in the hospital.
EMIT, normally used on urine or serum for the detection of drugs of abuse, has been utilized for the analysis of drugs in aqueous brain extracts. A modified Stas-Otto procedure performed on the brain tissue produced a liquid containing no interfering substances. The detection limits proved to be at least as sensitive as the chromatographic screening techniques normally applied to larger portions of the final aqueous filtrate. Out of 166 cases, 50 positive findings were determined. Two glutethimide cases gave positives for the barbiturate assay and a fatal overdose of amitriptyline appeared positive when tested with the benzodiazepine reagents. All other positive findings correlated well with the chromatographic findings.
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