Cocaine Testing in Hair Improved by Better Sample Preparation

Global Technical Marketing Lead

As the rate of cocaine misuse increases in the US, so does the use of drug testing by employers, schools, medics, courts, and prisons. Given the potential detrimental effect of false positives and negatives on the wellbeing and health of the people being tested, it is imperative that the tests are sensitive and reliable. As advanced analytical platforms and techniques have progressed rapidly in recent decades, so too has our power to better detect and identify compounds in trace quantities. These efforts continue to be refined, for varied uses, such as in metabolomics analyses in the life sciences. Methods have also been developed, optimized and validated specifically for the precise low-level detection and identification of cocaine and its metabolites in a variety of complex biological matrices. This article examines how optimized sample preparation can improve cocaine testing in hair samples.

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