Hydromorphone and codeine concentrations in oral fluid specimens from patients receiving substitution therapy with Substitol™ (morphine sulfate).

This study aimed to determine whether hydromorphone and codeine can be detected in oral fluid specimens following administration of Substitol™, a slow-release formulation of morphine. This is of interest for those monitoring treatment compliance using drug testing. Oral fluid specimens collected for compliance assessment in routine clinical practice or as part of a clinical trial were subjected to quantitative analysis of hydromorphone, morphine, codeine, and 6-acetylmorphine using highly sensitive mass spectrometric methods.

Postmortem proteomics to discover biomarkers for forensic PMI estimation.

The assessment of postmortem degradation of skeletal muscle proteins has emerged as a novel approach to estimate the time since death in the early to mid-postmortem phase (approximately 24 h postmortem (hpm) to 120 hpm). Current protein-based methods are limited to a small number of skeletal muscle proteins, shown to undergo proteolysis after death. In this study, we investigated the usability of a target-based and unbiased system-wide protein analysis to gain further insights into systemic postmortem protein alterations and to identify additional markers for postmortem interval (PMI) delimitation.

Skeletal muscle proteins: a new approach to delimitate the time since death.

Purpose: Skeletal muscle tissue is proposed as a forensic model tissue with strong potential, as it is easily accessible and its true-to-life state structure and function is well known. Despite this strong potential, skeletal muscle degradation studies are rare. The aim of this study was to test if a skeletal muscle-based protein analysis is applicable to delimitate the time since death.

Pupil function as a parameter for assessing impairment of the central nervous system from a traffic-medicine perspective.

To evaluate an individuals driving safety objective measurement methods are required which allow reproducible, reliable and subsequently verifiable data to be collected. In this study, we exposed healthy test subjects (n=41), as well as persons who were under the influence of drugs and/or medication (n=105), to different light stimuli and tested the pupillary light reflex in order to gain a better understanding of the physiological and pathological pupil function. The tests were performed using a "Compact Integrated Pupillograph" (CIP), which enables pupil reactions to be measured using infrared technology.