The synthetic urine

Urine analysis is primarily used because of its low cost. Urine drug testing is one of the most common testing methods used. The enzyme-multiplied immune test is the most frequently used urinalysis. Complaints have been made about the relatively high rates of false positives using this test.

Urine drug tests screen the urine for the presence of a parent drug or its metabolites. The level of drug or its metabolites is not predictive of when the drug was taken or how much the patient used. Rather, it is simply a confirmatory report indicating the presence of the parent drug or its metabolites.

Urine drug testing is an immunoassay based on the principle of competitive binding. Drugs which may be present in the urine specimen compete against their respective drug conjugate for binding sites on their specific antibody. During testing, a urine specimen migrates upward by capillary action. A drug, if present in the urine specimen below its cut-off concentration, will not saturate the binding sites of its specific antibody. The antibody will then react with the drug-protein conjugate and a visible colored line will show up in the test line region of the specific drug strip The synthetic urine.

When an employer requests a drug test from an employee, or a physician requests a drug test from a patient, the employee or patient is typically instructed to go to a collection site or their home. The urine sample goes through a specified 'chain of custody' to ensure that it is not tampered with or invalidated through lab or employee error. The patient or employee’s urine is collected at a remote location in a specially designed secure cup, sealed with tamper-resistant tape, and sent to a testing laboratory to be screened for drugs (typically the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 5 panel). The first step at the testing site is to split the urine into two aliquots. One aliquot is first screened for drugs using an analyzer that performs immunoassay as the initial screen.

 To ensure the specimen integrity and detecting possible adulterant, some other parameters such as, urine creatinine, pH, and specific gravity are tested along in this initial test. If the urine screen is positive then another aliquot of the sample is used to confirm the findings by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) or liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry methodology. If requested by the physician or employer, certain drugs are screened for individually; these are generally drugs part of a chemical class that are, for one of many reasons, considered more abuse-prone or of concern. For instance, oxycodone and diamorphine may be tested, both sedative analgesics. If such a test is not requested specifically, the more general test (in the preceding case, the test for opiates) will detect the drugs, but the employer or physician will not have the benefit of the identity of the drug.