Screening method for five commonly used amphetamines in urine by NMR spectroscopy

In the recent years the so-called designer drugs have been diffused dramatically worldwide. Amphetamine psychostimulants are one of the major classes of illicit drugs consumed for recreational purposes in the world. The detection of the illegal substances is important both in the management of their misuse and in the forensic field. Urine matrix is a reliable biological matrix for verifying amphetamines intake in the short and medium term because the excretion of these drugs mainly occurs in urine, where substantial amounts of unchanged drug are present. In response to a growing demand for reliable evidence of amphetamine use, a method for identification and quantitation of amphetamine, methamphetamine, 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine, 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine, 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-ethylamphetamine in urine has been developed by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, using electronic reference to access in vivo concentration method. The method showed good linearity. The limits of detection and quantitation of amphetamines analyzed ranging from 1.9–7.9 to 5.8–23.8 μg mL−1, respectively. These data demonstrate that the present method is suitable for detection of these drugs in urine samples, allowing to quantitate the target analytes without any purification step of the matrix.