Driving under the influence of zopiclone: Elimination between two consecutive blood samples.

Zopiclone is a widely used hypnotic drug which is frequently detected in apprehended drivers. For assessments in forensic cases, the elimination half-life (t Data was collected from apprehended drivers in Norway between 2003 and 2021. All cases where zopiclone was detected were included. In a subset of the material, two consecutive whole blood samples were collected ≥ 20 and < 60 min apart. Concentrations of zopiclone in blood were determined by LC-MS or UHPLC-MS/MS. The elimination and t The median concentration among all zopiclone positive cases was 0.044 mg/L (IQR 0.070 mg/L) (n = 2401). The most frequent additional drugs detected were ethanol (36%), diazepam (22%), amphetamine (14%) and THC (14%). In zopiclone-only cases (n = 364), the median concentration of zopiclone was 0.066 mg/L (IQR 0.115 mg/L). In 112 cases, two consecutive blood samples were collected. Of these, 28 cases showed increasing concentrations of zopiclone between the two sampling time points. Among the cases in which the concentration decreased (n = 84), the median C1 was 0.048 mg/L (IQR 0.062 mg/L) and the median C2 was 0.043 mg/L (IQR 0.056 mg/L). A Bayesian statistical model was used to obtain the posterior distribution of t This study showed that zopiclone is frequently detected in apprehended drivers in supra therapeutic concentrations and poly drug cases. The elimination of zopiclone in blood from two consecutive blood samples indicated an apparent t

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Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.