Screening assay in crime scene investigation for amphetamine in urine by immunological method

The Drug-of-Abuse One Step Test for the detection of methamphetamine (MA) and amphetamine (AM) in urine was evaluated. The two kinds of test device, one for MA (Device-MA) and the other AM (Device-AM), examined for their sensitivity and specificity. The detection limits of Device-MA and Device-AM were 1μg/ml and 2μg/ml, respectively. Seven compounds related to amphetamine such as methamphetamine, ephedrine, norephedrin, pseudo-ephedrine, methylephedrine, methoxyphenamine and p-hydroxymethamphetamine were found not to cross-react with Device-AM when tested at concentrations up to at least 200μ/ml. But secondary amines such as methoxyphenamine, p-hydroxymethamphetamine, ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine were found to crossreact with Device-MA at 0.5, 20, 20, 200 μg/ml, respectively. The results obtained for 175 urine samples by the proposed method using the two devices were compared with those by the conventional method (Syva Emit, TLC and GC/MS). Percent agreements between the two methods for urine samples, which are positive for both MA and AM and negative for both MA and AM were 100%. Total percent agreement was 95%.