Mephedrone Brief 11/13/2012: Yes, it was the 4-methylmethcathinone that killed him
November 13, 2012
There’s a new Case Report in the Journal of Analytical Toxicology
Adamowicz P, Tokarczyk B, Stanaszek R, Slopianka M. Fatal Mephedrone Intoxication–A Case Report. J Anal Toxicol. 2012 Nov 7. [Epub ahead of print] [PubMed][DOI]
The victim was a 30 year old male, found in a stairwell in a “critical state”. Emergency response was ineffectual and the individual died at the scene. The toxicology testing found his blood and vitreous humour positive for mephedrone (5.5 and 7.1 ug/mL, respectively). There was no alcohol in the individual, no positives on “routine screening analysis” nor any sign of amphetamine, methamphetamine or MDMA. The 2C-B compound initially suspected by police (based on some field assay, looks like) was not confirmed in the powder in his possession nor in tissue samples.
That’s it, short and sweet. The mephedrone (aka 4-methylmethcathinone) killed him.
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Additional reading on the substituted cathinone designer drugs of abuse can be found in my archive.
Related reading on MDMA-induced fatality can be found in the MDMA Archive.
DrugMonkey 
November 18, 2012 at 11:42 pm
so 0.0000055 grams * 5000 mL of blood = 0.0275 grams in his blood that was fatal? Did they extrapolate his dosage by analyzing what amounts had metabolized out through his urine? Because people take even 0.275 grams at once.
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November 19, 2012 at 4:28 pm
I’m not familiar with any human pharmacokinetic data for mephedrone yet, and I imagine this case has a poor estimate of time from dosing to death and tissue sampling. But going from the little that is available on mephedrone and some published data from MDMA and methamphetamine, it would be expected that a fairly low fraction of the dose ingested would be intact in his bloodstream.
And just from the non-unity vitreous/blood ratio alone, this clues us in to the fact that the body is a multi-compartment puzzle when it comes to drug-distribution.
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