In a criminal justice context, an expert toxicologist's opinion is often in the form of whether the concentration in the blood is "consistent with a therapeutic range."

So, for a given medication, there will be studies that say something like (just some random numbers here) "this medication is usually dispensed in doses of 10mg once per day at the low end and 70mg once per day at the high end. People who take a 10mg dose typically have a blood concentration that peaks between X and 2X after approximately an hour, and people who take a 70mg dose typically have a blood concentration that peaks between 7X and 14X after an hour. The substance in the blood has a typical half-life of 8 to 12 hours. On a daily dose, baseline blood levels will stabilize at Y for 10mg daily and Z for 70mg daily."

So, let's say someone has 80X in their blood. A toxicologist will be able to say with confidence "that's not consistent with a therapeutic dose - this person ingested way more of the substance than a doctor would ever prescribe." So, either drug abuse or poisoning.

Now, say someone has 2X in their blood. A toxicologist can say "that's consistent with a therapeutic dose" - but not much more than that. It's quite possible that person took 10mg or 20mg an hour ago, and takes that every day - but they may have taken 70mg 16 to 24 hours ago as a one-off. Or they may have taken 40mg 12 hours ago, and every other day for the last month. Or they may have taken 1,000mg 48 hours ago.

So, that's some of the nuance: it's fairly easy to rule out certain dosage quantities/timelines, but it's much harder to say what actually did happen. A lot of the time, the first one's all that's needed.

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You need an estimate of when the hydrocodone was taken, and an assumption that it was taken as a single dose. Also need to know the route of administration. Probably oral for hydrocodone. Then google "hydrocodone pharmacokinetics" and compare some graphs. May need to convert units also.

Looks like typical concentrations are around 10-100 ng/mL following normal doses in the 10-60 mg range. A blood concentration of 330 ng/mL is quite high based on very brief research.

Published papers on postmortem concentration in hydrocodone overdose give numbers around 0.4-0.5 mg/L (ug/mL) so overdose sounds plausible here, probably took a dose of >100 mg hydrocodone if I had to guess.

This is not legal or medical advice FYI

Volume of distribution, time of ingestion, half life of medication, was it taken orally or parenterally, etc, etc, would need to be known.

Also whether this was dose 1 or if there were multiple doses.

But the equations only apply to live people. After death, considerable changes can occur - Some drug concentrations go up, some go down, it’s not exactly predictable.

That being said, I haven’t really used pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics for years. Did you ask the person who performed the autopsy?

This interesting paper might help, although I’ve not read more than the abstract. To back calculate how much was taken you’d need a lot more information including time from dose, was it a single dose or taken repeatedly over time as well as height, weight, fat distribution etc

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Not new species per se, but certain human traits and genetic variances are more recent than others. The ability to digest lactose in adults is thought to be a recent development, for instance (https://doi.org/10.1038/500020a). A trend happening in the past couple centuries or so is increased presence of the medial artery (https://doi.org/10.1111/joa.13224).

Not sure where you are going. Given the choice of any type of construct, of course it is possible. After all, if you could somehow move astronomical masses around, you could just create your own galaxy.

Unfortunately, that isn't correct - no genetic component has been reproducibly identified. The basis for a genetic component is the apparent heritability of ADHD, which can run in families. However, genetics is not the only explanation for heritability.

The postmortem toxicology report suggests a death of drug overdose, with 0.33ug/ml blood concentration of hydrocodone. So thats what we were trying to estimate.

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A single sample? No. Multiple samples? It depends. When dosed, the concentration in blood rises for a period and then declines as it is metabolized and cleared from the body. Each drug has a sort characteristic curve for the drug and it’s metabolites that you could compare to a series of samples taken over time which you may be able to use to determine the initial dose. It depends a bit on the dynamics of the drug clearance, and at what times you took the samples.

As a scientist and clinician with some exposure to ADHD, and as someone who has put many hours in listening to ADHD experts like David Nowell and Russell Barkley

eg https://www.additudemag.com/intention-deficit-disorder-adhd/amp/

my sense is that the experts seem to conclude that variables such as nutrition may play an exacerbating role in ADHD, possibly making symptoms somewhat more or less pronounced, but likely not a causal role, because nutrition can only act on top of the existing wiring so to speak.

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Yea we have a toxicology report thats what im trying to get a guess of what dose it is.

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Analyzing anything that has to do with food. You basically need to lock up people and monitor them eating if you wish to determine any effects at all. It‘s a bit like studying any behaviour: sure people say they do something, but if you wish to link lettuce to any benefiz, your first challenge will be to measure actual lettuce eaters and not only people saying they eat letzuce (who may or may not actually eat lettuce, eat less, say lettuce when they mean cauliflower or spinach etc).

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What about poverty? That could meet these criteria. Or traumatic experiences? At what point should behaviours (inattention, hyperactivity) be considered a disorder contained within an individual, rather than a product of circumstance?

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No genetic explanations for ADHD exist. The studies have claimed to have found them, typically with small sample numbers, have not been reproduced. Currently ADHD has no known aetiology.

I think the article below best answers your question. Think of the earth’s distance from the sun as fixed but the habitable zone is expanding outwards.

I can’t speak to evolution at all.

For your follow up question in a sci fi way if Venus was in the habitable zone before earth yes we would need to move outward in the solar system.

I think the most fascinating fact in the article is that earth has already moved through 70% of the habitable zone.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2013.13788