Is Metabolomics a Useful Tool for the Evaluation of the Emerging Group of “Nitazene” 2-Benzylbenzimidazole Synthetic Opioids: Systematic Review

Abstract

New psychoactive substances (NPS) can pose analytical challenges due to plenty of reasons, their chemical structures can have similarities with other NPS, limited knowledge of their pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics with their rapid appearance on the market and the instability of many NPS compounds. 2-Benzylbenzimidazole or nitazene have been the most reported opioids in early wakening system by EMCDDA in 2023. They are often adulterant with other opioids and can be up to 1000 times more than morphine leading to ingestion with micro doses. The findings based on searching the data bases PubMed and Scopus revealed that liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry tandem with high- resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) have been employed to analyze nitazene and their metabolites in biological specimens as they undergo N-des-alkylation and O-des-alkylation, but metabolomics tool has not been employed diversly for nitazene. Metabolomics can be a valuable tool for nitazene as the findings of metabolomics tool have been promising when used on other NPS. Further research should be conducted to overcome the challenges associated with complicity and novelty of nitazene.