Indole-3-acetic acid, or IAA, is what most DMT becomes. A 2018 review states that MAO-A converts DMT into IAA, the most abundant metabolite, with DMT-N-oxide second (Barker, 2018). A modelling study of intravenous DMT in 13 healthy volunteers likewise described IAA as the major metabolite (Eckernäs et al., 2022).
Its share in urine tells researchers how DMT was handled. In a 2015 study of six people, 97% of what was recovered after swallowed DMT was the MAO product, while after smoked DMT more went down other routes (Riba et al., 2015). When MAO is blocked, the balance shifts toward DMT-N-oxide and N-methyltryptamine (Barker, 2018).
IAA is not unique to DMT, which limits its use as a marker. The review calls it a common end product of related tryptamines (Barker, 2018), so finding it in urine says little on its own. Psilocin has a cousin metabolite, 4-hydroxyindole-3-acetic acid, measured in a 1997 human study (Hasler et al., 199700014-9)).
Sources
- Barker, 2018, Frontiers in Neuroscience
- Riba et al., 2015, Drug Testing and Analysis
- Eckernäs et al., 2022, Clinical and Translational Science
- Hasler et al., 1997, Pharmaceutica Acta Helvetiae: psilocin and 4-HIAA by HPLC
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