Screening of Benzodiazepines

Benzodiazepines have a broad range of therapeutic use and are widely prescribed as safe drugs with relatively few side effects for the treatment of insomnia, anxiety and epilepsy.However, they are also abused in cases of crime, suicide,and drug-facilitated sexual assault. These molecules are active at very low concentrations and some of them have very short half lives. For this reason, the analytical methods must show extensive specificity and sensitivity for forensic purposes. We have developed and validated a method for 20 benzodiazepines and four metabolites in whole blood using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) coupled with ultrahigh pressure
liquid chromatography (UHPLC) pumps.