SOFT - TIAFT 1998 Poster Session 3 Thursday October 8, 1998
FATAL AMITRIPTILINE POISONING: STUDIES USING CHEMICAL, TLC, GC/MS AND SURFACE IONIZATION MS-METHODS

Utkur Kh. Rasulev1, Usman Khasanov1, Makhmudjan. M. Shakhitov2, Turgun. Kh. Islamov3

1. Arifov Institute of Electronics;
2. Republic Bureau of Forensic and Medicine Expertise;
3. Republic Scientific Research Crime Center; Tashkent, Uzbekistan

A man, aged 37, was found dead at home. Specimens were delivered to the toxicological laboratory, along with an empty container of amitriptiline. Chloroform solutions of alkaline extractions from postmortem stomach, intestines, liver, kidney were analyzed for the presence of amitriptyline using chemical reactions and TLC.

The alcohol solutions of the alkaline extractions of the liver and stomach were analyzed using a a Hewlett Packard Model 6890 gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer by a Drug-M method using a capillary column with 5% phenilmetilsiloxane, injector temperature of 280°C and temperature programming of the oven from 150°C up to 280°C. The sample size was 1 µl.

The stomach contents contained myristic and linoleic acids, amitriptiline (M + 2771, 2152, 2024, 912, 58100) and in liver, its methabolite, amitriptiline M (HO-) was identified which had peaks of molecular ions M + 2931, 2153, 2022, 911, 58100 and also the linoleic and palmitic acids.

Solutions from stomach and liver were studied using mass-spectrometer MI-1201 moderated for surface ionization (SI) investigations. The temperature of the tungsten oxide emitter was 1050°K, and the Knudsen cell temperature was 120°C. The sample size was 1 µl. Owing to high selectivity of the SI method relative to nitrogen-containing organic compounds, the spectra contained only a few masses and consisted of [M-H]+ ions with m/z = 226 with intensities of 15-20 %, as well as ions m/z = 22217, 20220, 58100. In liver, amitriptiline metabolite, M (HO-) was found. The abundance of [M-H]+ with m/z = 292 was 1%.

The chemical, TLC, GC/MS and SI mass-spectrometry analysis of the postmortem specimens for the triciclic antidepressant amitriptiline (stomach 2 µg/g, intestines 1.7 µg/g, liver 1 µg/g, kidney 1 µg/g) confirmed that this was a fatal poisoning by amitriptiline.

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