Two Fatalities Involving Mebroqualone

Abstract

Mebroqualone is an analogue of methaqualone, and there is a very little published information regarding the toxicity of this designer drug. We describe two cases with non-lethal levels of mebroqualone in blood collected at autopsy. Case 1 was an accidental death that involved a house fire, and the decedent was found to have a blood mebroqualone concentration of 10,228 ng/mL. Case 2 was a completed suicide by train, and the decedent was found to have a blood concentration of 115 ng/mL. To our knowledge, this is the first report in the scientific literature to compare two postmortem blood concentrations of mebroqualone. Mebroqualone was extracted from postmortem blood using a simple liquid-liquid extraction procedure and analyzed via gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.