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Defending Positive Amphetamine Results

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Book cover Beating Drug Tests and Defending Positive Results

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Abstract

People try to defend positive amphetamine test results by claiming the use of over-the-counter (OTC) cold medications, Vicks® inhaler, or herbal diet loss products. Although ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, and other sympathomimetic amines present in various OTC cold medications interfere with amphetamine screening assays, the gas chromatography/mass spectrometric (GC/MS) confirmatory test can easily distinguish such sympathomimetic amines from amphetamine or methamphetamine. Vicks® inhaler contains l-amphetamine which has little cross-reactivity with d-methamphetamine which is abused. Therefore, possibility of a false positive from using Vicks® inhaler in an immunoassay screening test is modest, but l-methamphetamine can be easily differentiated from d-methamphetamine by using chiral derivatization and GC/MS analysis. Although certain Chinese weight loss products may contain ephedra which may cause false positive tests in the immunoassay screening test, the GC/MS confirmation step should be negative. Therefore, none of these defenses is effective in defending positive amphetamine test results in workplace drug testing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Medical School, 6431 Fannin, Room 2258, 77030, Houston, TX, USA

    Amitava Dasgupta

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Dasgupta, A. (2010). Defending Positive Amphetamine Results. In: Beating Drug Tests and Defending Positive Results. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60761-527-9_9

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