Green tea has thermogenic properties and promotes fat oxidation beyond that explained by its caffeine content per se. The green tea extract may play a role in the control of body composition via sympathetic activation of thermogenesis, fat oxidation, or both.

Life-threatening opioid intoxication developed in a patient after he was given small doses of codeine for the treatment of a cough associated with bilateral pneumonia. Codeine is bioactivated by CYP2D6 into morphine, which then undergoes further glucuronidation. CYP2D6 genotyping showed that the patient had three or more functional alleles, a finding consistent with ultrarapid metabolism of codeine. We attribute the toxicity to this genotype, in combination with inhibition of CYP3A4 activity by other medications and a transient reduction in renal function.

No abstract

Desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (DESI-MS) was used as a simple and rapid way to analyze drug tablets and powders without sample preparation. Experiments were performed with a home-made DESI source coupled to a triple-quadrupole linear-ion trap (QqQ(LIT)) mass spectrometer. Twenty-one commercial drugs as well as some illicit Ecstasy tablets and powders were analyzed. MS spectra almost exclusively showed the protonated or deprotonated ion of the drug after directing the pneumatically assisted electrospray onto the tablet's surface. With some tablets, inhomogeneity of the surface resulted in different spectra depending on the spot analyzed, thus showing that DESI could be used for imaging. Directly triggered MS/MS spectra were used for confirmatory analysis, with analysis times often below 10 s per tablet. For illicit Ecstasy tablets, DESI-MS, GC/MS and LC/MS analyses provided similar qualitative results for the main analytes. With MS/MS spectra library comparison or exact mass measurements, this technique could become very powerful for the rapid analysis of unknown tablets and shows the great potential of desorption techniques as an alternative to solution-based analysis.