{"id":2150,"date":"2014-06-27T14:57:30","date_gmt":"2014-06-27T19:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=2150"},"modified":"2014-07-03T15:42:02","modified_gmt":"2014-07-03T20:42:02","slug":"accurate-drug-testing-on-the-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/accurate-drug-testing-on-the-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Accurate drug testing on the go<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2144\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Urine-DMF-MS.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2144\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2144\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Urine-DMF-MS.jpg\" alt=\"These microfluidic devices use electrical currents to move around droplets containing chemical solutions. Canadian researchers have used the technology to create a miniaturized drug testing lab that could be used by police or in athletics. (Photo credit: Brandon Seale)\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Urine-DMF-MS.jpg 400w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Urine-DMF-MS-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2144\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">These microfluidic devices use electrical currents to move around droplets containing chemical solutions. Canadian researchers have used the technology to create a miniaturized drug testing lab that could be used by police or in athletics. (Photo credit: Brandon Seale)<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Researchers have found a way to condense a complete drug-testing lab into a device the size of a backpack.\u00a0The device uses a technique called microfluidic to extract compounds from a dried urine spot and subject it to complex chemical analysis by mass spectrometry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The new device detected cocaine and other drugs at concentrations down to 40 nanograms per millilitre &#8211; far lower than the limits of other portable assays &#8211; in less than 15 minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Portable drug tests &#8211; similar in operation to the urine-on-a-stick pregnancy test &#8211; already exist, however they are based on antibodies and have high rates of both false positives and false negatives.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1021\/jm500246h?prevSearch=breast%2Bcancer%252C%2Bsugar&amp;searchHistoryKey=\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Original research paper<\/span><\/a>\u00a0published in the journal\u00a0<em>Analytical Chemistry\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0<strong>June 6, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Aaron Wheeler, University of Toronto,\u00a0Ontario<\/span><\/h4>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Nelson Lafreni\u00e8re, University of Toronto,\u00a0Ontario<\/span><\/h4>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Andrea Kirby, University of Toronto, Ontario<\/span><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers have found a way to condense a complete drug-testing lab into a device the size of a backpack.\u00a0The device uses a technique called microfluidic to extract compounds from a dried urine spot and subject it to complex chemical analysis by mass spectrometry. The new device detected cocaine and other drugs at concentrations down to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2144,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[32,1842,51,53,1843,50,476],"class_list":["post-2150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-chemistry","tag-drugs","tag-health","tag-medicine","tag-narcotics","tag-ontario","tag-public-health"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Urine-DMF-MS.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-yG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2150"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2182,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150\/revisions\/2182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}