CHROMATOGRAPHY, Vol. 27 (2006), No. 1, pp. 1-11

Division of Analytical Research for Pharmacoinformatics, Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Course of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Nagasaki University, 1-14 Bunkyo.machi, Nagasaki 852-8521, JAPAN

In recent years, many kinds of drugs of abuse have been used worldwide and caused serious social problems. Among these, methamphetamine(MP) is the most popular drug of abuse in Japan. In addition to MP illegal designer drugs, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine and 3,4-methylendioxyamphetamine have become popular and spread in use with young people. On the other hand, anorectics such as fenfluramine, phentermine, N-nitorosofenfluramine and mazindol were adulterated in Chinese diet products and have caused serious side effects. For prediction of and protection from the risk to human health, sensitive and selective analysis of these drugs of abuse is very important. Thus, the authors have examined HPLC methods to determine these compounds with fluorescence detection and developed highly sensitive methods with the detection limits from amol to fmol levels. These methods have been successfully applied to analysis of abusers’ or suspects’ biological samples such as urine, blood and hair.