Fentanyl has emerged as the leading cause of fatal drug overdoses in the U.S. Individuals misusing drugs may not always be aware of exposure to fentanyl.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe standard protocol in addiction treatment/pain management is to conduct immunoassay screens for major drugs subject to misuse, followed by confirmatory testing of positive results. However, this may miss unscreened or rarely screened drugs that could pose risks, especially to polydrug users. We sought to determine the prevalences of unscreened/rarely screened drugs in a sample of individuals misusing drugs in 7 U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The aims are to compare the results of presumptive drug testing with confirmation of positives vs. direct-to-definitive drug testing, combined with investigation of urine vs. oral fluid as test matrices.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDextromethorphan (DXM) is an antitussive drug found in commonly used nonprescription cold and cough medications. At low doses, DXM is a safe drug that does not produce adverse reactions. However, abuse of DXM has been reported among adolescents and young adults using the drug at higher doses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSynthetic cathinones have recently emerged as a substitute for common drugs of abuse. Synthetic cathinones can elicit powerful adverse effects such as delusions, hallucinations and potentially dangerous behavior. To develop a method to analyze 10 synthetic cathinones in oral fluid, we implemented a combined approach of solid-phase extraction and ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.
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