A new automated assay for the detection of synthetic urine in drug testing

Urine drug testing can be subject to attempts to dilute, adulterate, or substitute the specimen. Substitution may involve the use of commercially available synthetic urine. Current laboratory methods to detect specimen validity often fail to detect these products. We evaluated a new automated assay designed to detect synthetic urine. We determined that the assay met performance requirements and accurately identified five commercially obtained products as synthetic urine while not identifying known normal urine as synthetic. However, in a group of 843 patient urine samples, 40 of the 46 urine samples identified as “synthetic” were samples with creatinine