| Day: | Wednesday |
| Time: | 12:30 - 13:15 |
| Room: | Room 2 |
Mass Spectrometry Approaches to the Opioid Epidemic
Marilyn Huestis, Retired Chief, Chemistry and Drug Metabolism, NIDA, Huestis & Smith Toxicology, LLC, USA
The opioid epidemic began when pain became the 6th vital sign. More than 100 million US citizens report chronic pain that requires treatment. Physicians rapidly moved to potent opioid analgesics rather than other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, leading to opioid dependence. Prescription opioid abuse is estimated to cost $72.5 B annually in health-care costs. The Drug Enforcement Agency's increased controls on health care providers and clandestine laboratories offerings of designer opioids and synthetic fentanyls resulted in opioid-dependent users moving to these new potent opioid drugs. These developments challenge laboratories to identify and quantify a wide variety of prescription opioids, heroin, and novel psychoactive opioids. Laboratories need analytical solutions to address the opioid epidemic. Liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) offers the power of multi-opioid analysis and rapid quantification of numerous analgesics. To determine the utility of high resolution accurate mass spectrometry (HRAM) to enable broad spectrum screening for prescription, illicit and clandestine laboratory opioids in clinical research will be discussed.