Forensic toxicological analysis of hair: a review

Abstract

Analysis of hair provides useful information regarding drug addiction history or drug toxicity. Keeping in view some important applications of hair analysis, a lot of work done in the past few decades has been reviewed in this article. When compared with other biological samples, hair provides a larger window for drug detection. Drugs get deposited in hair through blood circulation by various mechanisms, after its administration. The deposited drug is much stable and can be detected after a longer period of time as compared with other biological samples, e.g., saliva, blood, and urine. Moreover, segmental analysis can depict multiple or single drug administration by using sensitive analytical techniques. Complex methods for drug extraction and the high cost of analysis are some drawbacks of hair analysis. LC-MS and GC-MS are the prominent among other techniques of choice due to high sensitivity. In this review, detailed knowledge about the drug deposition, extraction, analysis, and application of results in forensic and clinical cases have been discussed.

The effectiveness of a sexual assault nurse examiner-grounding program (SANE-GP) on knowledge, skill and practice regarding sexual assault examination (SAE) among nurses working in a tertiary care hospital in Udupi district, India: A study protocol

“…These include positioning and examination of the client, obtaining high-quality specimens, identifying and reporting genital-anal injuries after sexual assault, comparing the injuries of consensual and non-consensual intercourse, identifying and collecting traces from the fingernail and other materials for the DNA analysis of the aggressor and employing DNA evidence in sexual offence cases to aid the identification of suspects, movement of forensic evidence and chain of custody, analysing and preventing drug-facilitated crimes against women, usage of photo colposcopy to identify hymenal transections and other injuries in children and adult females, simulation, forensic photography, bite-mark identification, handling vicarious trauma and mindfulness based interventions for better coping. Peer support is also essential for nurses to be able to cope with the demands of working in such situations (Drake and Adams, 2015;Gharedaghi et al, 2018;Yesodharan et al, 2018Yesodharan et al, , 2021Rodriguez et al, 2019;Usman et al, 2019;Yassa and Badea, 2019;McAllister and Vennum, 2021;Zweig et al, 2021).…”

A Review of Analytical Methods for Codeine Determination

“…GC can separate a mixture of compounds into individual components where each component can be detected by a detector. Nowadays, mass spectrometer is the most commonly used detector for GC [ 68 ], due to its applicability to detect various drug analytes based on their mass-to-charge ratio ( m / z ). GC-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) is sensitive and leads to definitive identification of codeine based on its characteristic MS fragmentation patterns [ 69 ].…”

Characteristics of Cut Head Hair: An Evidence in Criminal Investigations

“…An early review on forensic examination of hair is published in the book edited by Robertson (1999) and a complete review on chemical and physical behavior of human hair is published in the book by Robbins (2012). Recently, a review on forensic toxicological analysis of hair is published in the paper by Usman et al (2019).…”