European addiction research
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Comparative Study
Efficacy of a polyethylene glycol marker system in urine drug screening in an opiate substitution program.
Screening for concomitant drug consumption is necessary in opiate substitution therapy of opiate-dependent patients. Adulteration of samples is a common problem in this setting. A recently developed polyethylene glycol marker system allows reliable identification of urine samples. In this study, we aimed to compare the rates of drug detection in conventional and marker urine samples. ⋯ With the marker urine, an unexpectedly high prevalence of concomitant consumption can be found. Marker urine testing has a significantly higher sensitivity for the detection of concomitant drug use.