Toxicology? I think so!

A patient came into the hospital and they found a bag of powder on the person. So they got a urine sample from the patient to see if they had been using the drug. By the look of the powder, they thought it would be Methoxpenidine (MXP), which is a "legal high" giving the effects of a psychedelic. Havisha and I researched the metabolites that would be seen in the urine after the MXP had metabolized in the body, we came up with a couple metabolites. Then, with the help of Lewis, we found the mass of the metabolites by plugging the formulas into a mass calculator. After the urine sample went through the Mass Spectrometer, we analyzed the results looking for the masses of the metabolites of the drug. We actually found all three metabolites, each having a large amount, concluding that this wasn't the first time the patient had used the drug. It turns out that this was a new drug that we hadn't seen before at King's, but now it is in the library of the drugs, so we can test for it in future cases! It was very cool to see it all worked out, I definitely understand how urinalysis for drug tests work now!