Urine| Hair Follicle | Oral Fluid | Blood | ETG
Hair analysis is increasingly recognized as an effective approach for identifying drug and alcohol use. It captures enduring evidence of alcohol and drug intake by embedding biomarkers in the strands of growing hair. When harvested near the scalp, hair reveals a detection period of up to three months for both alcohol and drugs. The collection process is straightforward, it's relatively resistant to tampering, and it is simple to transport.
A 1.5-inch hair sample, roughly equivalent to 200 strands or the size of a #2 pencil, is required for testing and verification, yielding 100mg of hair, which is ideal for standard screening. For tests involving EtG or more than ten drug panels, a 150mg specimen is suggested. Accurate measurement using a jeweler's scale is advised. If scalp hair isn't accessible, a comparable volume of body hair can be gathered. "Head hair" specifically implies scalp hair, while "body hair" includes all other types such as facial or axillary hair.
Process Overview
The key stages in a lab's drug result analysis process are Accessioning, Screening, Extraction, and Confirmation.
During Accessioning, the sample is first recorded in the lab's system. This step ensures the sample is correctly sealed and shipped, assigns a unique LAN (Laboratory Accessioning Number), and incorporates any essential data absent from an electronic chain of custody.
Screening is a preliminary evaluation for drug presence. Though cost-effective for excluding drug use in most samples, positive findings at this stage must be verified to be legally valid. Results showing a presumptive positive in Screening necessitate further validation.
For samples testing presumptive positive during Screening, additional hair is taken from the initial sample for Extraction. In this step, drugs are recovered from hair in much lower concentrations than in methods like urine or saliva tests, highlighting hair drug testing's complexity.
Validation of any positive screening is performed with GC/MS, GC/MS/MS, or LC/MS/MS techniques. Presumptive positive samples undergo washing before confirmation as required. The laboratory process, from Accessioning through to Confirmation, is scrutinized under CAP (College of American Pathologists) Hair designation and adheres to ISO / IEC 17025 standards.
Benefits of hair drug testing:
Drawbacks:
Note: Frequently termed as "hair follicle tests," the analysis actually targets the hair strand, not the follicle beneath the scalp.
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