Profenofos metabolites in human poisoning

Profenofos and its metabolites were determined in a case of fatal poisoning. Little profenofos and large amounts of metabolites were detected by gas chromatography/flame photometric detection in the acid extracts of blood and urine after methylation with diazomethane. Four major metabolites containing phosphorus were identified with the synthesized metabolites, namely, despropylated profenofos, desethylated profenofos and des-S-propylated profenofos, respectively. 4-Bromo-2-chlorophenol (BCP), an aryl moiety of profenofos, was also determined in blood and urine with high performance liquid chromatograph (HPLC) as free or conjugated metabolites.     

Distribution of lidocaine and disopyramide in human blood and tissue, a case report of death caused by spinal anesthesia

An 11-year-old girl was anesthetized with hyper-baric solution of lidocaine as spinal anesthesia for an appendectomy in a surgical clinic. Respiratory arrest which occurred soon after the injection, was not discovered for a period of time. Since spontaneous respiration recovered within 2 h of intensive resuscitation, the patient was transferred to a community hospital for intensive care. Ten hours after the spinal anesthesia, she died of cardiac failure. The concentration of lidocaine in the brain was 5-10 times more than that in other tissues. The relationship between the possibility of malpractice of spinal anesthesia and tissue distribution of the drug was discussed. In addition to lidocaine, a toxic amount of disopyramide, an antiarrhythmic drug, was detected in the body. The distribution of disopyramide was also estimated, and the pharmacokinetics of disopyramide in plasma and tissues were studied experimentally in rats.     

A survey of the potency of Japanese illicit cannabis in fiscal year 2010

In recent years, increased 'cannabis potency', or Δ(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content in cannabis products, has been reported in many countries. A survey of Japanese illicit cannabis was conducted from April 2010 to March 2011. In Japan, all cannabis evidence is transferred to the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare after criminal trials. The evidence was observed at Narcotics Control Department offices in major 11 cities. The total number of cannabis samples observed was 9072, of which 6376 were marijuana. The marijuana seizures were further classified, and it was found that in terms of the number of samples, 65.2% of them were seedless buds, and by weight 73.0% of them were seedless buds. Seedless buds were supposed to be 'sinsemilla', a potent class of marijuana. THC, cannabinol (CBN) and cannabidiol (CBD) in marijuana seizures exceeding 1g were quantified. The number of samples analyzed was 1115. Many of them were shown to contain CBN, an oxidative product from THC. This was a sign of long-term storage of the cannabis and of the degradation of THC. Relatively fresh cannabis, defined by a CBN/THC ratio of less than or equal to 0.1, was chosen for analysis. Fresh seedless buds (335 samples) contained an average of 11.2% and a maximum of 22.6% THC. These values are comparable to those of 'high potency cannabis' as defined in previous studies. Thus, this study shows that highly potent cannabis products are distributed in Japan as in other countries.     

Simple determination of carboxyhemoglobin by double wavelength spectrophotometry of absorbance difference and the comparison with gas chromatographic method

This paper describes the spectrophotometric determination of carboxyhemoglobin (CO-Hb) in blood on the basis of double wavelength spectrophotometry of absorbance difference. Absorbance measurements are made in the 500–600 nm region at a blood dilution of 100–200-fold. Blood is diluted with a solution containing Na₂S₂O₄ to provide two components of CO-Hb and deoxyhemoglobin (deoxy-Hb). Absorbance difference at the two wavelengths at which deoxy-Hb has the same absorbance reflects only the CO-Hb component because the opposite component is nulled out of the mixture. After measurement of the absorbance difference, the measuring solution is saturated with CO gas to make all Hb derivative CO-Hb and remeasured at the same wavelengths. The percent of CO-Hb is considered the absorbance difference ratio. Results obtained by the present method was in satisfactory agreement with gas chromatographic data in blood not containing methemoglobin (Met-Hb). Comparative experiments using the gas chromatographic method and the present method were performed with samples containing Met-Hb. However, while there is a deficiency in the gas chromatographic method when the samples contain Met-Hb, the results of the present method were in close agreement with theoretical values when samples are mixed with CO-Hb, O₂-Hb and Met-Hb. Advantages of this method are that it is simple and accurate, standard curve or equation for calculation and accurate dilution are not necessary.     

Pre-set estimation-based in-silico silhouette-based methodology for improving the robustness to viewing direction difference for assisting forensic gait analysis

Forensic gait analysis is used to visually and quantitatively analyze information regarding the appearance and style of walking that can be presented as evidence in the court. The demand for analyzing CCTV pedestrian footage in video surveillance has been increasing. The dependence of the accuracy of semiautomatic silhouette-based analysis, often used in forensic science, on the differences in the viewing directions is a very challenging issue that is yet to be resolved for real case applications. Currently, the different viewing directions used in comparison footage significantly decrease the accuracy of same person analysis when using the silhouette-based method, often used in the Japanese forensic science domain. A calibration-based method was previously prosed to resolve this problem, but it requires performing an elaborate measurement procedure at the camera installation site for an accurate analysis. In this study, we propose a novel in-silico silhouette-based analysis method that significantly expands the number of viewing direction pre-set settings to 900 from the 24 used in the previous method. Several software tools have been developed to ensure that all the procedures can be executed on a computer. The experimental results confirm that the accuracy of the proposed method is comparable to that of the calibration-based method. Furthermore, the practical comparison results from actual consultation confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method under existing viewing direction differences. We therefore anticipate that the proposed method will be beneficial for improving the analysis accuracy in real cases and therefore serve as a substitute of the previous method.