Drugs of Abuse Screening Benefits from LoGiCal® Reference Materials

Unilabs AB in Eskilstuna, Sweden, is taking advantage of LGC Standards’ LoGiCal reference materials to perform clinical analyses and screen for drugs of abuse, as chemist Elin Widing explained: “Unilabs is a privately owned clinical laboratory that analyses company healthcare and workplace samples, as well as samples from drug abuse centres. Samples are received from across Sweden and screened either qualitatively or semi-quantitatively using immunological assays, followed by quantitative LC-MSMS or GC-MS analysis for verification. Ready-to-use LoGiCal solutions are ideal for our purposes; it is so much simpler than weighing powders for inhouse preparation of reference materials.”

“We evaluated LoGiCal solutions of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), zopiclone and alpha-hydroxyalprazolam, including deuterium-labelled alpha-hydroxyalprazolam as an internal standard for quantitative mass spectrometry analysis. Analyses were run in parallel with assays that were using our existing reference materials, and the results were comparable. LoGiCal reference materials are very good quality and competitively priced and, since the initial product evaluation, we have also ordered tramadol and its metabolites for our laboratory. In the future, as we purchase more reference materials, we intend to use LoGiCal solutions whenever they are available.”