Urine| Hair Follicle | Oral Fluid | Blood | ETG
Hair testing is recognized as a robust means for detecting the use of substances such as drugs and alcohol. The hair offers a lasting record of alcohol and various drug usage by embedding biomarkers within the fibers of the developing hair. When gathered near the scalp, hair can potentially yield up to a three-month detection timeframe for both alcohol and other drugs. Hair collection is straightforward, moderately resistant to tampering, and convenient for shipping.
A sample size of 1.5 inches of around 200 hair strands (akin to a #2 pencil in thickness) nearest to the scalp can provide 100mg of hair, which is the optimal amount for both screening and confirmation purposes. For EtG, additional tests, and/or panels exceeding 10, it is advised to use 150mg of the specimen. It is suggested to weigh the sample on a jeweler’s scale. If scalp hair cannot be obtained, a similar amount of body hair may be used. Our reference to head hair implies scalp hair exclusively. In contrast, body hair encompasses all other types of hair (such as facial or axillary hair).
Process Overview
The four primary phases in the lab processing of a drug test result consist of Accessioning, Screening, Extraction, and Confirmation.
Accessioning denotes the first stage of processing a sample in a laboratory’s system. This step includes ensuring the sample is properly sealed and shipped, assigning an arbitrary LAN (Laboratory Accessioning Number), and completing any further data input not supplied by an electronic chain of custody protocol.
The Screening stage is an initial cursory analysis for potential drug use. Though Screening is financially advantageous for negating drug usage in most samples, a confirmed positive is needed for legal validity. Samples showing presumptive positives during Screening must undergo a subsequent confirmation.
If a sample shows a presumptive positive during Screening, additional hair is gathered from the original specimen for the Extraction phase. At this stage, drugs are extracted from hair at much lower concentrations compared to other methods (e.g., urine or oral fluid), making hair drug screening the most complex method to execute.
Confirmation of any positive screening outcome is executed using GC/MS, GC/MS/MS, or LC/MS/MS. All samples with presumptive positives are soaked before confirmation as necessary. The entire lab process from Accessioning to Confirmation is assessed under the CAP (College of American Pathologists) Hair specification and accredited to ISO / IEC 17025 standards.
Advantages of hair drug testing:
Limitations:
Note: Although commonly known as "hair follicle tests", the actual analysis is conducted on the hair strand itself, not the follicle beneath the scalp.
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