Screening of Drugs in Saliva

Authors: Elmongy H*1,2 and Elmongy H*1,2

DOI: 10.23880/macij-16000103

Volume 1, Issue 1

Abstract

Saliva is an interesting medium for analytical research due to the ease of collection and sample preparation prior to analysis. On the other hand, many drugs diffuse through the salivary tissues and can be detected in the salivary fluidat concentrations similar to blood plasma. Therapeutic drug monitoring and clinical pharmacokinetics studies are intensively conducted on blood samples withdrawn whether from healthy or patient subjects who is invasive mean of sampling and might be inappropriate for uncooperative subjects like children and elderly. Moreover, the collection of blood samples requires special facilities and highly trained personnel. Saliva provides fast and noninvasive sampling besides being the best choice for efficient screening of illicit drugs that are either ingested (ex. Alcohols) or smoked (i.e., cocaine, PCP, methamphetamine, and marijuana) following recent use. However, the quantitative aspects for drug analysis in saliva may still be under question as the salivary drug levels are affected by different factors like salivary pH, protein binding and the pKa values which may vary from one subject to another according to the nutritional habits, time of collection regarding ingestion of food, ingestion of other drugs or the bacterial content. Screening of drugs in saliva is to be very useful in case of investigation of illegal drug use with emergency room admission, as serum and urine screening methods cannot be convenient from potentially uncooperative patients. Thus, saliva samples as a rapid and minimally invasive analytical technique can introduce the optimum alternative. The composition of salivary fluid, containing 99.5% water, facilitates the analytical processes and sample preparation.

Keywords: Analytical Research; Therapeutic Drug; Monitoring

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