The drugs that you intake is widely distributed in the body depending on the solubility and the lipid: water co efficient partition of the drug. The distribution of the drug in the body is decided by several other factors too like the drug concentration, pharmacokinetics and the pharmacodynamics of the drug. There are certain areas of the body where there is active perfusion of the circulating system in the forward direction while passively in the reverse direction. One such area is the hair follicle. The drug that you take in gets widely distributed in the body including the hair follicles.

The hair follicle drug screening test is a long term screening procedure that can be done to detect any drug in the past 3 months. To explain hair follicle test, it is essential to understand that it can be done in the hair from any part of the body, which means that even if you shave off the hair on your head, face, pubis, and over any where in your body, the hair follicles that still remain would reveal your drug history.

This is especially true of the hair alcohol test. Suppose you consumed alcohol two months back and you have a pre employment screening the next day. Of course the alcohol would have been cleared from blood and urine but not from the hair follicles. There are even cleansing techniques like detoxification products which may sometimes fail to eliminate the alcohol.

This is the reason why hair drug screen is done as one of the reliable procedures for drug screening. But it is not as easy as the conventional urine and blood drug testing. Certain procedures are to be followed properly for getting the valid results.

The hair drug screen test requires about 150 strands of hair, cut at the scalp and must be within one and a half inch in the region of the newly formed hair. And the hair must not be obtained form the hairbrush. Then the hair specimen must be neatly put in a specimen pouch and packed in the sample bag and must be sent in the self addressed envelope to the laboratory.

The hair drug test is a non- invasive, cost effective and accurate methods that can detect the major substances of abuse namely cocaine, marijuana, opiates, methamphetamines, ecstasy, amphetamines and PCP. It is not possible to adulterate the hair follicle specimens easily.

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Drug testing as such has become an important procedure in every employment procedure. Imagine the time and labor that would take for every single test. Every time you perform a test and send it to the laboratory and then get the results. By the time the specimens reach the lab, there are many chances of the samples being adulterated. You can potentially fight this by doing a rapid drug testing.

Rapid drug tests are a group of tests that have been essentially designed for parents, employers, companies and individuals. The entire test would take only few minutes to perform and have accuracy up to 99%. The tests come in various forms like urine drug testing, blood testing, saliva, and hair drug testing. You can ask all your employees to get their urine samples and then test all of them simultaneously.

The most commonly followed rapid response drug tests is the urine drug test. The major reason behind this is that almost all drugs of abuse are metabolized in the liver and excreted in urine within few hours of consumption of the drug. The urine sample can also be obtained using non invasive techniques and does not involve any use of needles, catheters, etc. it can be performed during any time of the day. The samples can be obtained over and over even if the first sample is not utilized properly.

Rapid results tests consist of saliva drug testing too. The mechanism of the testing is similar to that of blood testing. The advantage of saliva drug testing over urine drug testing is that it can be done anywhere and at anytime. The amount of urine is limited as compared to that of the saliva. It is also easy to take saliva specimen and also this would be free from the phenomenon of shy bladder. The test can be done even just after few minutes of consumption of the drug rather like urine which would take some time for the drug to be metabolized. Hair follicle drug testing is extremely important to detect long term drug usage. The hair follicles house drugs even after 3 months of cessation of the drug consumption.

Rapid screen test is a quick, comfortable and easy to perform qualitative analysis using the simple non invasive techniques. The tests must be performed in the precise instructed manner to get the valid results.

The major difference between home based drug testing and laboratory testing is that home based drug testing are only qualitative analysis that is just a screening procedure. It just detects the presence of any drug in the body. The confirmatory tests for drugs can not be done using these testing kits. The confirmatory procedures and the qualitative analysis of any drug in a sample can be done only in registered labs. Lab drug test can be done for a large number of samples at a given time and have more accuracy and reliability. This can be done for a large spectrum of drugs.

Lab drug testing can be done using urine, blood, saliva, sweat, and hair follicle as samples. The screening tests are the primary drug testing procedures. It utilizes the techniques of immunoassay like ELISA or Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay, RIA or Radio Immunoassay, CLIA or Chemiluminescence immunoassay, etc. these assays produce results only if the drugs are present in threshold concentrations called cut off concentrations. They can not detect drugs if they are present below this concentration. Home based drug testing also are based on this.

Secondary tests or confirmatory tests are done by using gas or liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. Laboratory drug test must have the specific data about the detection periods, rate of metabolism, mode of excretion, plasma half life, cut off concentration, etc. based on these data, the results are given. The incidence of false positive and false negative results is less in case of lab drug testing owing to the high levels of sensitivity and specificity.

This kind of laboratory drug testing can be done for work places where a large number of samples have to be handled. The samples are collected and stored in sterile containers before they are sent for testing. The samples are sent as soon as possible in sealed containers. Urine and blood samples are tested the same way as it was collected except in some cases if it has a lot of turbidity due to proteinuria where the samples have to be treated. Certain tests like hair drug testing require prior treatment.

The labcorp drug screening laboratories are a chain of laboratories that are spread across the nation which provide wide scale drug testing facilities. They also have other health related services like HIPAA contacts, careers, etc. These labs correspond to the various standards specified by the government and the regulatory bodies.

Suggested Reading:
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