Drug and alcohol review
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Drug and alcohol review · Jan 2020
Assessing the limit of detection of Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and immunoassay strips for fentanyl in a real-world setting.
Drug checking is a harm reduction intervention increasingly used in the context of the opioid overdose epidemic. The aim of the study was to determine the limit of detection for fentanyl of two point-of-care drug checking technologies. ⋯ Fentanyl immunoassay strips were able to consistently detect the presence of fentanyl in samples at lower concentrations than FTIR spectroscopy. Given that FTIR spectroscopy is able to quantify content, mixture and concentrations on an array of compounds beyond just fentanyl but requires concentrations generally greater than 10%, these findings provide evidence for use of FTIR spectroscopy and immunoassay strips in combination to compensate for the limitations of each technology alone.