earticle

영어

Ketamine analogues are one of the new psychoactive substances (NPS) that have recently been increasing in occurrence and causing social problems worldwide. One of these, 2-fluoro-2-oxo PCE, has also been detected more frequently in Korea recently. 2-fluoro-2-oxo PCE is known to exhibit hallucinogenic and dissociative effects by acting on N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors, similar to ketamine. In early 2024, a man who caused a traffic accident while driving, stated that he purchased and took ketamine. But 2-fluoro-2-oxo PCE was detected in his urine and seized items. In general, to detect narcotics in biological samples such as urine and hair, detection of parent drugs and metabolites is performed to exclude the possibility of sample contamination. However, for NPSs such as 2-fluoro-2-oxo PCE, metabolite research has not been sufficiently conducted. Therefore, we performed analysis of 2-fluoro-2-oxo PCE metabolites in urine using liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry and MetabolitePilotTM software. The detected major metabolites of 2-fluoro-2-oxo PCE were a dehydrogenated form of the cyclohexanone ring (M163), an N-deethylated form (M144), and a form in which N-deethylation and dehydrogenation occurred simultaneously (M124). The metabolite of N-deethylated, hydroxylated, and glucuronide-conjugated form was also identified.