Comparison of different derivatizing reagents for cannabis analysis in urine which is used as an illegal substance

The illegal substances analysis in biological samples becomes increasingly important by means of fast, reliable and easy to apply methods. Today, the most common abuse and addictive illegal substance is cannabis. The detection of cannabis use can be made by analyzing Δ9-THC, which is psychoactive substances of cannabis plants, and its metabolites in biological samples. Urine, a biological material, that commonly used for the analysis of drugs of abuse is preferred because of its non-invasive, easy of sampling and the metabolites of illegal substances are found high concentrations relatively. In this thesis, it is aimed to determine chromatographically by a chemometric method for the fast, easy and reproducible analysis of THC-COOH which is an important metabolite of cannabis in urine. For this purpose, different derivatizing agents have been tried and optimum conditions have been determined by the central compound design for the optimization of two different derivatization agents (N, O-bis (trimethylsilyl) acetamide, BSA) and N, O-bis (trimethylsilyl) trifluoroacetamide, BSTFA). As a result of the preliminary studies, it was determined that the parameters affecting the derivatization stage were sample volume, derivatization agent volume, derivatization temperature and derivatization time. Determination of the optimum conditions for BSA derivatization, urine volume and the derivatization agent volume was found to be very important in the statistical analyzes performed as a result of the experiments. In BSTFA analysis, the effects of urine volume, derivatization agent volume, derivatization temperature and derivatization time were found to be very effective. As a result of this study, affecting the derivation stage parameters respectively, optimum values of sample volume, derivative agent volume, derivatization temperature and derivatization time were found: for BSA; 5 ml, 100 μl, 100 ° C and 60 minutes, for BSTFA; 5 ml, 99,06 μl, 100 ° C and 5 minutes. It has been determined that a minimum number of experiments can be performed in a systematically designed method and an optimized method for detecting THC-COOH in urine samples can be developed and successful results can be obtained.