Urine| Hair Follicle | Oral Fluid | Blood | ETG
Hair analysis has emerged as an effective mechanism for identifying drug and alcohol consumption. Hair retains a prolonged record of alcohol and drugs by embedding biomarkers inside the fibers of the growing hair. When taken near the scalp, hair can offer up to a 3-month detection timeframe for alcohol and drugs. It is straightforward to gather, relatively hard to tamper with, and simple to transport.
A 1.5-inch segment of roughly 200 hairs (approximately the size of a #2 pencil) nearest to the scalp yields 100mg of hair, the ideal quantity for testing and validation. For EtG, additional tests, and/or panels exceeding 10, a 150mg sample is advised. We suggest measuring the sample with a jeweler’s scale. If scalp hair is unavailable, an equivalent quantity of body hair may be used. By head hair, we exclusively mean scalp hair. Body hair encompasses all other types (facial, axillary, etc.).
Process Summary
The four primary phases in the laboratory processing of a drug test result include Accessioning, Screening, Extraction, and Confirmation.
Accessioning involves the preliminary processing of a sample into a lab’s system. This encompasses ensuring the sample was properly sealed and shipped, assigning a randomized LAN (Laboratory Accessioning Number), and completing any extra data entry not supplied by an electronic custody system.
Screening entails an initial cursory check for substances of abuse. While Screening is cost-effective for eliminating drug usage in most samples, a positive screen needs confirmation for it to be court-admissible. Samples that test presumptively positive during Screening require secondary confirmation.
If a sample tests presumptively positive during Screening, additional hair is drawn from the initial sample and readied for Extraction. During this step, drugs are extracted from hair at much lower concentrations compared to other methods (such as urine or oral fluid), which explains why hair drug analysis is among the most challenging methods to conduct.
Confirmation of any positive screening finds is done through GC/MS, GC/MS/MS, or LC/MS/MS. All presumptive positive samples undergo washing before confirmation if necessary. The complete laboratory process from Accessioning to Confirmation is scrutinized under the CAP (College of American Pathologists) Hair classification and the accreditation to ISO / IEC 17025 standards.
Benefits of hair drug analysis:
Drawbacks:
Note: Commonly known as "hair follicle tests", these tests actually examine the hair strand, not the follicle beneath the scalp
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