Preliminary Analysis of Methamphetamine Detection in Lucilia sericata (Diptera: Calliphoridae) Reared in Methamphetamine-Treated Meat at Various Developmental Stages

Abstract

Background: It is possible to identify drugs and poisons present in cadavers by analyzing blowfly larvae and pupae col­lected during forensic autopsies. The main purpose of this study was to use Lucilia sericata’s larvae and pupae to iden­tify drugs and poisons present in human cadavers. Methods: In an investigation, immature L. sericata fed meat treated with methamphetamine (MA) at various concentra­tions (45, 90, and 180 ng/mg) were analyzed to detect MA. Acetylation derivatization and liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) were used as sample preparation methods prior to gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analytical instru­men­tation to find MA. Results: According to this study, L. sericata can be used in toxicological testing to identify MA in a host body. All L. seri­cata larval stages, particularly the third stage larva, pupa and empty pupa tested were positive for MA. Larvae in their first instar produced weak peaks. The L. sericata post-feeding instar following the 45 ng/mg treatment showed the highest MA concentration. For the first time, derivatization using the acetylation approach was used to prepare samples, and successfully, excellent results were obtained. Conclusion: Low quantities of MA can be easily found in immature fly samples using GC-MS. It is important to ana­lyze all samples including human tissues and insect samples, for postmortem drug testing. They can be utilized to find entire MA before they are excreted in excretory samples such as urine. Also, third instar larvae are a great and reliable sample for toxicological study.

Keywords

• Entomotoxicology; Lucilia sericata; Methamphetamine; Drug testing; GC-MS