Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Know about Saliva Drug Testing for Opiates

There are different types of illegal drugs in the market. Many people are getting addicted to the drugs. So, the need of drug testing arose in order to prevent the addiction and also to safeguard the health. Out of these illegal drugs, the opiates cause adverse effects on the health.

By using the opiates initially, one may feel intense pleasure, calm, and feeling of drowsiness. Poppy plant is the raw material of opiate. Morphine which is present in the poppy plant is the chemical compound called opium, and this opium is used for preparing Opiate. The different types of opiates are heroin, morphine, codeine. The drugs which are also called as opiates will spoil the health of the abuser. The long term usage of the drugs will have many adverse health effects. Some of the health effects are the cellulitis, heart failure, collapsed veins, abnormal brain wave patterns.


So, in order to prevent the addiction to these illegal drug, different drug testing methods are used. Out of those because of the convenience, the saliva drug testing is used for the detecting the presence of the opiate.


Saliva drug testing is done using a scrub which is similar to the tooth brush, but instead of bristles of the brush, the swab is present. This swab is placed in between the lower cheek and gums. Until the swab gets wet i.e., about two minutes, it is kept in mouth. After that swab is sent to the laboratory to detect the presence of opiate.


For opiate metabolites the initial cutoff concentration level is 40 ng/ml. The confirmatory test levels are 40 ng/ml each and 4 ng/ml for morphine and codeine. One can get detect both morphine and heroin for about 1 to 2 days after the usage of the drug. And, one can detect the codeine for about 2 to 3 days after the usage of the drug.


Saliva drug testing gives the instantaneous results exactly after usage. So, this can be used for detecting the opiates usage.

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