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Toxicological analysis of medications in biological samples (Bachelor thesis)

Τσολάκη, Θεοκλείτη/ Tsolaki, Theokleiti

According to the latest data, the main cause of poisonings in Greece was found to be medications, with antipsychotics, antidepressants and benzodiazepines dominating. Antipsychotic drugs are used to treat schizophrenia, antidepressants are used to treat depression or to relieve symptoms such as anxiety and insomnia, while benzodiazepines are used for anxiety, insomnia, epileptic seizures or even as sedatives in short medical procedures. All of them have a unique pharmacological profile and are associated with specific symptoms in an overdose situation. The objectives of this thesis were the detection of antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs and benzodiazepines in clinical and autopsy samples, to find the effect of the sex and the age of the subjects from whom the specimens under study came from on the identification of these drugs and to study the relationship of the detection of the specific substances with the presence of other drugs as well as with the state of poisoning. In order to achieve the objectives mentioned above, the samples were subjected to a liquid-liquid extraction pretreatment. Then, they were analysed using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry and the results were processed with specific software to detect and identify the compounds contained in the samples. Finally, a statistical analysis of the results was carried out, from which, inter alia, the following results were obtained. Benzodiazepines are more detected, compared to the other two categories of drugs, in both clinical and autopsy samples, while they and antidepressants are also more detected in samples from people with poisoning. Age seemed to affect the detection or not only of antidepressants in clinical samples, while their detection was associated with the detection or not of benzodiazepines in autopsy sample. Ultimately, the age and the sex of the subjects from whom the samples were obtained, showed an effect on the state of poisoning.