Detection and quantitation of benzodiazepines in less than 3 min using PESI-MS

Benzodiazepines (BZDs), which were the most prescribed medications globally in the 80s, remain frequently used as recreational drugs and are implicated in drug-facilitated sexual assaults or driving under influence of drugs cases. They are used for their anxiolytic, sedative, muscle relaxant and anticonvulsant properties. For that reasons, quantitative screening of BZDs is a routine work for emergency samples in a clinical toxicology context. Laboratories typically rely on immunochromatography (lateral flow test) or immunohistochemistry methods which quickly generate a result but often suffer from two major drawbacks:

• numerous false negative results
• only qualitative information