Untargeted metabolomics approaches to improve casework in clinical and forensic toxicology—“Where are we standing and where are we heading?”

Clinical toxicology (CT) and forensic (FT) represent two disciplines of dedicated to the qualitative quantitative analysis respective interpretation alcohol, drugs abuse (DOA), over counter (OTC), prescription or poisons, mainly in humans. Analytical challenges, such as transient occurrence new psychoactive substances (NPS) on (il)legal drug market, insufficiently long detection windows some DOAs, lack objective measures unambiguously proof sample manipulation well interpretative issues, for instance, difficulty discriminate occasional users from chronic/addictive ones still require further evaluation research, though. Metabolomics is a rather research field, aiming qualitative, endogenous compounds (small molecules with molecular weight < 1000 Da) an organism identify changes related certain stimulus, example, intake. Over last years, metabolomics has been established valuable tool different disciplines, including very recently CT FT. techniques usually applied include nuclear magnetic resonance majorly hyphenated high-resolution mass spectrometry (HR-MS), similar instrumentation used We will summarize practical considerations each step typical untargeted metabolome workflow (experimental set-up, collection storage, analysis, data processing, statistics, identification) FT, provide update current applications profiling critically discuss its benefits thereof within particular field. This article categorized under: Toxicology > New Psychoactive Substances