Review
Hair analysis for abused and therapeutic drugs

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Abstract

This review focuses on basic aspects and recent studies of hair analysis for abused and therapeutic drugs and is discussed with 164 references. Firstly, biology of hair and sampling of hair specimens have been commented for the sake of correct interpretation of the results from hair analysis. Then the usual washing methods of hair samples and the extraction methods for drugs in hair have been shown and commented on. Analytical methods for each drug have been discussed by the grouping of three analytical methods, namely immunoassay, HPLC–CE and GC–MS. The outcomes of hair analysis studies have been reviewed by dividing into six groups; morphine and related, cocaine and related, amphetamines, cannabinoids, the other abused drugs and therapeutic drugs. In addition, reports on stability of drugs in the living hair and studies on drug incorporation into hair and dose–hair concentration relationships have been reviewed. Applications of hair analysis to the estimation of drug history, discrimination between OTC drug use and illegal drug use, drug testing for acute poisoning, gestational drug exposure and drug compliance have also been reviewed. Finally, the promising prospects of hair analysis have been described.

Introduction

Nowadays, hair is being recognized as a third fundamental biological specimen for drug testing besides urine and blood. Although more than 450 papers on hair analysis for drugs have been published since 1954, most of them have appeared only in this decade. Due to the progress of separation techniques and detection sensitivity and selectivity, drugs in hair can be detected and determined at the levels of pico-mole/mg. The largest number of papers on hair analysis have dealt with cocaine, followed by opiates and, third, by amphetamines. The top three groups of drugs comprehended almost 50% of all papers on hair analysis. However, recent hair analysis studies have been changing to other kinds of drugs, for example doping agents like clenbuterol, therapeutic drugs like benzodiazepines, methadone and carbamazepine, and tobacco components (Table 1).

The fields in which hair analysis has so far been applied are mainly forensic toxicology and drug abuse studies, followed by clinical toxicology and clinical chemistry. Although most of the reports until 1990 dealt only with the detection of drugs in hair, recent studies have tried to find more information from hair analysis and have dealt in more detail with drug incorporation mechanism and drug behavior in hair.

In the field of drug testing, great interest has been taken in hair analysis in recent years because of its wide window of detection. However, there are very few reviews written about both basic aspects and applications of hair analysis. Therefore, this review describes these basic matters and applications concerning abused and therapeutic drugs in hair.

Section snippets

Biology and sampling of hair

Although hair looks like a primitive structure, it is actually a very complex part of human body and its biology is still unclear at many points. Each hair shaft grows up via the synthesis of hair matrix cells accompanied by keratinization. The hair shaft consists of an outer cuticle, an inner medulla and a central cortex. Generally, the cuticle is less intact toward the distal end of the hair shaft than the proximal side.

Hair grows in predictable patterns, lengths and textures in different

Washing of the hair sample to remove external contamination

The washing of hair samples has been well investigated mostly for the analysis of cocaine. Washing solvents for hair samples containing cocaine are generally divided into three categories; MeOH or EtOH [2], [3], [6], [9], [15], 0.1% sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) or other detergents [4], [7], [8], [10], [11], [13], and dichloromethane [12], [14], [16] (Table 2). The hair samples are incubated, briefly washed or stirred in these solvents at room temperature or 37°C for up to 15 min. In most cases,

Immunoassay

In the early time of hair analysis studies, Baumgartner et al. [29], [30] reported the radioimmunoassay (RIA) for opiates [29], cocaine/benzoylecgonine [30] and phencyclidine [31] in hair. Using RIA, the assay for cocaine/benzoylecgonine [32], [33], [34] and methadone [35], [36] in hair have also been reported elsewhere. Franceschin [37] reported the detection of morphine in hair with the Abbott TDx. Nakahara et al. [38] reported an ELISA method using monoclonal antibodies for detection of

The outcome of hair analysis for morphine and related drugs

It is said that hair analysis studies on abused drugs started from the time when Baumgartner et al. [30] succeeded to detect opiates in the hair of heroin abusers by RIA and estimate their opiate abuse histories by sectional hair analysis. In 1986, Marigo et al. [44] detected morphine in the alkaline digestion of heroin addicts’ hair using HPLC with fluorometric detection. The choice of GC–MS for the identification of morphine and 6-acetylmorphine(6MAM) in hair started from 1991. Goldberger et

Stability of drugs in hair

The Potsch and Skopp’s group have studied the stability of drugs in hair under various conditions [23], [146], [147]. They found [23] that after storage of natural hair in soil or in water for 4 weeks, the opiate levels had dramatically decreased. They also showed [146], [147] that the opiate concentrations in hair decreased by both bleaching and permanent waving. Jurado et al. [148] also reported the influence of cosmetic treatment on hair for drug testing of cocaine, opiates, cannabinoids and

Relationship between AUC or dosage and drug concentration in rat hair

Nakahara et al. [73] have proposed that the ratio of hair concentration to plasma AUC should be used as an index of drug incorporation tendency into hair in order to understand drug–hair incorporation mechanisms. They defined the ratio of hair concentration to plasma AUC under a definite condition as the drug incorporation rate into hair (ICR) and demonstrated that there are big differences of ICRs between 20 drugs; that is, there was a 3600-fold difference between the highest ICR which was for

Behavior of drug in hair

Nakahara et al. [78] investigated the movement of methoxyphenamine (MOP) along the hair shaft at the rate of hair growth and the stability of drugs in hair for several months. It was demonstrated that the drug incorporated into the hair moved along hair shaft at a rate of approximately 3 mm/week according to hair growth without any diffusion as shown in Fig. 6. When drug bands were extrapolated according to the sections in which drugs were detected, the drug bands corresponding to 7-days dosage

Promising prospects of hair analysis

In the early stages of hair analysis, it was thought that it was very hard to detect a few ng or sub-ng amounts of drugs contained in hair. We can now detect and determine 0.01 ng/mg or less of drug in hair by GC–MS or LC–MS. Depending on the further development of the analytical instrumentation, we may expect the detection of a few pg/mg or less of drugs in hair in the near future. Therefore, it is clear that we will be able to extract more of the information implicated in hair in the future.

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