Since death investigations often involve collaborative work between different forensic disciplines, notably pathology, toxicology, and entomology, the current study examined the effects of designer opioids on the development of blow fly larvae and the ability to detect and quantify the drugs and/or metabolites present in each stage of the fly’s life cycle.
This research represents an advancement in the combat of the opioid epidemic by offering a fully validated protocol that complements the analytical toolkit in forensic toxicology laboratories and medical examiners offices for complex biological matrices by 1) providing a protocol to extract and quantify fentanyl and metabolites from complex matrices using QuEChERS to aid in forensic investigations, 2) an evaluation of any growth effects fentanyl has on the development of the insects and the potential implications on the impact of minPMI estimations, 3) conclusions on the ability to correlate the concentration of fentanyl and metabolites from the insect tissue to the initial concentration of the feeding media.