Browse the latest forensic toxicology articles or search the collection.
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Selecting Brain and Other Tissues for Postmortem MDMB-CHMICA Testing
A single autopsy found MDMB-CHMICA in nine specimen types. The distribution supports considering brain tissue, without establishing blood conversions or a fatal threshold.
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Do Methamphetamine-Related Symptom Clusters Provide an Individual Diagnostic Test?
A 164-person longitudinal study linked days of methamphetamine use with several symptom dimensions. The resulting clusters, null negative-symptom finding and nonsignificant diagnostic comparison do not establish an individual diagnostic rule.
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Does an Infant MRI Pattern That “Normalizes” Prove Recovery From Prenatal Methamphetamine Exposure?
A longitudinal infant study found region- and sex-dependent imaging trajectories. Clinical and imaging denominators differed, most methamphetamine exposure included tobacco, and early convergence did not establish permanent recovery.
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Can Norfentanyl Be Interpreted as Having the Same Opioid Potency as Fentanyl?
A historical bioassay found markedly different activity for fentanyl and norfentanyl. Experimental potency measurements do not provide human postmortem toxicity conversions.
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Why an Opiate Screen Could Miss Fentanyl in a Fatal Overdose Investigation
The 2016 New Haven outbreak illustrates a target-panel limitation: the urine immunoassay used could not detect fentanyl. Later mass-spectrometric and postmortem findings answered different questions.
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Why Accurate Mass Alone Cannot Distinguish Some Drugs in Postmortem Blood
A 159-case comparison showed useful quantitative performance by high-resolution MS, while demonstrating why chromatography and diagnostic ions still matter.
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Can Volume of Distribution Rank a Drug’s Postmortem Redistribution?
A 129-case study found important exceptions to a simple volume-of-distribution rule. Its paired specimens support drug-specific caution, not a correction formula.
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Can Methamphetamine Sensitize Dopamine Release Without Raising Resting Dopamine?
A 2014 mouse experiment separated resting dopamine from the response to a later methamphetamine challenge. Measurement method, brain region and withdrawal interval changed the interpretation.
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Did Higher Methamphetamine Doses Produce More Positive Sweat Patches?
In a controlled eight-person study, higher-dose positive patches contained more methamphetamine, yet fewer available weekly patches met positivity criteria. Dose, patch mass, detection frequency and reporting cutoff answered different questions.
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Why a Broth Ethanol Model Did Not Transfer Uniformly to Human Blood and Plasma
A four-strain bacterial experiment found that the culture matrix changed ethanol production and model performance. Strong broth relationships did not establish a universal postmortem correction.
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Does a Fentanyl Autoradiograph Measure Unchanged Drug or Postmortem Redistribution?
A rat autoradiography study tracked radioactive labels in fentanyl and its metabolites. Its physiological distribution findings were not a test of drug movement during a postmortem interval.
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What Did Thirteen Observations Actually Test in a Postmortem Redistribution Model?
A 2016 study compared a theoretical redistribution factor with 13 observations from nine cases. Its 44-drug table was broader than the drugs directly checked against paired antemortem blood.
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Do Heavy Lungs Establish That Fentanyl Caused a Death?
An Orange County fentanyl-positive series found similar lung-weight distributions whether fentanyl was included in the cause of death or not. The study did not validate lung weight as an independent diagnostic test.
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Does a Central-to-Peripheral Fentanyl Ratio Near One Exclude Redistribution?
In 58 paired postmortem samples, the median central-to-peripheral fentanyl ratio was 1.03 but individual ratios ranged from 0.14 to 9.52. Site agreement cannot establish the concentration during life.
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Did 18% of Hair Samples Contain Both Methamphetamine Enantiomers? Read the Four-Analyte Denominator
A 2018 chiral hair-method study reported 18% with all four methamphetamine and amphetamine enantiomers. Its full-text results show why that differs from the percentage with both methamphetamine enantiomers.
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What Did “Success” Mean in the 49-Person Naltrexone–Bupropion Pilot?
The 2016 open-label pilot crossed a prespecified threshold for further research. Its two recruitment stages, response definition and statistical estimate do not amount to a randomized comparison with placebo.
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Can Bone Marrow Methanol Be Converted to Blood? Limits of a 36-Rabbit Experiment
Lipid correction improved marrow-to-blood methanol estimates in 36 rabbits but left substantial individual variation. One human observation did not validate a universal conversion for death investigations.
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Does a Postmortem Fentanyl Result of 57.9 µg/L Define a Fatal Threshold?
A published fatality combined 67 observed fentanyl patches, possible additional drug use and a subclavian-sample result of 57.9 µg/L. The case supports contextual interpretation, not a universal lethal cutoff.
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Does a Ninefold Group Difference Provide a Postmortem Fentanyl Correction Factor?
A study compared femoral whole blood after death with serum from separate living patients using fentanyl patches. Its group differences do not provide an individual redistribution correction.
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Can Pericardial Fluid Replace Urine for Postmortem Benzodiazepine Screening?
A 66-autopsy comparison tested three screening devices in urine and pericardial fluid. Documented benzodiazepine false-negatives show why automated results still need instrumental follow-up.