The role of urine drug testing for patients on opioid therapy.

Opioid analgesics must be prescribed with discernment and their appropriate use should be periodically assessed. Urine drug testing, although not designed specifically for this role, is a widely available and familiar method for monitoring opioid use in chronic pain patients. Urine drug testing can help track patient compliance and expose possible drug misuse and abuse.

Excretion of Delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol in sweat.

Sweat testing is a noninvasive technique for monitoring drug exposure over a 7-day period in treatment, criminal justice, and employment settings. We evaluated Delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) excretion in 11 daily cannabis users after cessation of drug use. PharmChek sweat patches worn for 7 days were analyzed for THC by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS).

Detecting cocaine use through sweat testing: multilevel modeling of sweat patch length-of-wear data.

Although urine analysis remains the standard for detection of drugs of abuse, sweat patches provide a convenient alternative that avoids some of the problems with drug testing such as violations of privacy in observed urination, possibility of disease transmission, and transport of noxious fluids. This study examined minimum length of wear necessary to detect recent or concurrent cocaine use in a convenience sample of active cocaine users and also differences in analyte concentrations with increasing longer-term wear. Twenty-seven subjects (22 active drug users and 5 comparison subjects who did not use drugs) wore short-term ((1/2)h, 1 h, 1(1/2) h, and 2 h), then long-term patches (1, 3, 7, and 14 day).

Validated gas chromatographic-negative ion chemical ionization mass spectrometric method for delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol in sweat patches.

Background: A sensitive gas chromatography-negative ion chemical ionization mass spectrometry (GC/MS-NICI) method was developed and validated for the measurement of Delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in human sweat patches.

Methods: THC-d(0) and THC-d(3) were added to worn blank sweat patches (PharmChek; PharmChem Incorporated) and extracted with 3 mL of methanol-0.2 mol/L sodium acetate buffer (pH 5.

Detecting crack and other cocaine use with fastpatches.

A continuing social problem is presented by the large number of individuals who use crack cocaine. Recent research has identified unique pyrolysis products of crack or burned cocaine as anhydroecgonine methylester (AEME) and ecgonidine (ECD) through gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) that allow for the detection of crack use distinct from other cocaine use. However, there have been no large-scale studies to document the presence and prevalence of these substances in sweat.