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The presentation and assessment of the first psychotic episode
Published in Kathy J Aitchison, Karena Meehan, Robin M Murray, First Episode Psychosis, 2021
Kathy J Aitchison, Karena Meehan, Robin M Murray
Both prescribed drugs and drugs of abuse can precipitate the onset of a psychotic episode. Steroids can cause a manic illness in some predisposed individuals. The positive symptoms of schizophrenia can be reproduced by LSD, ecstasy (‘E’) and amphetamine. Phenylcyclidine (PCP) can cause these as well as apathy, emotional withdrawal and loss of motivation, while many clinicians believe that prolonged heavy abuse of cannabis can induce psychosis. Urine screening should be carried out in all cases of first-episode psychosis. There is some recent evidence that hair analysis, where available, is more accurate and often shows evidence of drug abuse even when this is strenuously denied at first.32
A Methodological Approach to the External Examination
Published in Cristoforo Pomara, Vittorio Fineschi, Forensic and Clinical Forensic Autopsy, 2020
Stefano D’Errico, Monica Salerno
The presence or absence of head hair, as well as its color and length, should be recorded. If the decedent is wearing a wig, the name of the manufacturer should also be noted. A generous hair sample should always be collected and preserved as natural hair can be used to establish race or for later toxicological analysis (e.g., drug-related death). No particular special procedures are required for the storage of hair samples (a sterile blood collection tube or even an envelope can be used), and the hair samples can be stored at room temperature for years without degradation. Although there is no particular need for hair toxicology as a routine component of every forensic examination, the retained sample may prove invaluable if the cause of death is disputed at some later date. Hair analysis may also be valuable in the diagnosis of drug-related deaths. If no drug is found in the hair root, then blood drug concentrations are substantial, which would indicate the decedent had no prior exposure to the drug. On the other hand, high concentrations in the hair would indicate regular use and suggest that the decedent may have been tolerant to the drug in question.
Hair Analysis for Detection of Drugs of Abuse
Published in Steven H. Y. Wong, Iraving Sunshine, Handbook of Analytical Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and Toxicology, 2017
Thomas Cairns, Donald J. Kippenberger, AnnMarie Gordon
Hair testing involves cutting a small sample from the vertex of the head, because it has the fewest hairs in the telogen (resting) phase. Approximately 60 to 100 hairs (weighing about 25 mg) are cut close to the scalp. The collected sample is placed in a secured envelope with the root ends carefully aligned to allow correct sampling of the first 4 cm. This represents the last 90 days of growth.14 When scalp hair is not available, body/pubic hair or the clippings or shavings of fingernails may be submitted. Chain-of-custody documentation and Medical Review Officer functions are identical to conventional urine screening. Hair samples, however, can be collected under close supervision without embarrassment, and evasion by substitution or adulteration of the sample is not possible. Hair has no special requirements for storage and/or shipment. Another unique feature of hair analysis over urine or sweat testing is that the initial result can be verified by the collection of a second hair sample, referred to in this laboratory as a “safety net” sample. This action is not possible with urine or sweat testing, because a subject who has abstained from drug use for a few days before submitting the second specimen will easily evade detection.
Evaluation of elements in hair samples of children with developmental language disorder (DLD)
Published in Nutritional Neuroscience, 2023
Ayat Bani Rashaid, Mazin Alqhazo, Dianne F. Newbury, Heba Kanaan, Mohammad El-khateeb, Ahmad Abukashabeh, Feda Al-Tamimi
Hair samples are collected in biobank cohorts [55], but some researchers have debated the utility of this sample type because the composition of hair can be altered by external exposure to materials such as bleaches, hair dyes, and shampoos [56, 57]. Moreover, most companies of hair analysis have not validated their analytical methods by comparing hair elements against their standard references. These limitations were avoided in the current study by washing children’s hair using baby shampoo at least two times before cutting, excluding the participants who used to dye, or bleach their hair, and by cleaning hair samples in Triton X 100 and acetone solution to remove any external substances [58]. Our data show that levels of trace elements and toxic metals were consistent across samples and instruments (both ICP–MS and ICP–OES) taken one-month apart. Results from the study demonstrated accurate measurements of elemental hair composition using either ICP–OES of average relative error of 6%, or ICP–MS of average relative error of 8% for the seven investigated elements. These results demonstrate the utility of hair samples in the spectral investigation of child trace elements and toxic metals. Hair samples are painless and simple to collect and thus, when the collection is adequately controlled, these samples could provide a useful alternative sample for the evaluation of biomarkers in children.
Amino acids profiles of children who stutter compared to their fluent sibling
Published in International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice, 2020
Mazin Alqhazo, Ayat Bani Rashaid
Hair specimen is the most accessible tissue and can be sampled easily from human subjects without pain (Robbins and Robbins 2002). This is why for a long time, hair analysis seemed an attractive feature in genetic, medical, and clinical studies. Clinically, hair represents elongated records of diseases and medications for treatment compared with other biological specimens: blood and urine (Kempson and Lombi 2011). Therefore, hair samples are a feasible specimen for clinical analysis and appropriate diagnostic indicator of diseases that could replace routine blood and urine samples (Kempson and Lombi 2011). The improvement in diagnostic techniques using hair as an alternative of blood and urine is indispensable, cogitating that obtaining blood samples from old patients, children, and newborn is challenging and uncomfortable (Bhushan 2010; Kempson and Lombi 2011).
LC-MS/MS based detection and characterization of covalent glutathione modifications formed by reactive drug of abuse metabolites
Published in Xenobiotica, 2019
R. Allen Gilliland, Carolina Möller, Anthony P. DeCaprio
The present work utilized in vitro reactive metabolite trapping assays to generate adducts of GSH and a number of common drugs of abuse. The ability of many of these compounds and metabolites to bind to GSH has implications for both toxic mechanisms of action and approaches to longer-term exposure biomonitoring for these drugs. The data also suggest that many of these drugs have the potential to bind to protein thiols in vivo. This phenomenon may have important implications for longer-term biomonitoring of abused drugs, where analysis of such adducted protein could be usefully applied in areas of drug testing and forensic toxicological analysis. At the present time, hair analysis is the only available method for long-term detection of illicit drug use. However, hair analysis suffers from methodological and interpretive challenges, and the mechanisms by which most drugs incorporate into hair are not clearly established (Wennig, 2000). Current work in this laboratory is focused on assessing thiol modification in human proteins by reactive metabolites of abused drugs and developing technology for routine monitoring of such modifications as an alternative to hair analysis.