British Columbia Centre on Substance Use, 400-1045 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2A9, Canada; Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, 2775 Laurel Street, Vancouver, BC, V5Z 1M9, Canada.
British Columbia Centre on Substance Use, 400-1045 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2A9, Canada.
Drug Alcohol Depend. 2020 Jul 1;212:108006. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2020.108006. Epub 2020 May 12.
Point-of-care drug checking services, wherein individuals can check the content and purity of their drugs, have emerged as a public health intervention to address the fentanyl crisis; however, there have been no rigorous evaluations of the technologies against reference standard laboratory techniques.
Two point-of-care technologies, fentanyl immunoassay strips and Fourier-Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, were implemented at two supervised injection sites in Vancouver, Canada. We calculated sensitivity, specificity, and false negative rate for both testing methods as compared to a laboratory reference standard.
Between October 2017 and 2018, 331 samples were sent for confirmatory testing. Immunoassay strips had a sensitivity of 87.5% and specificity of 95.2%, with a false negative rate of 12.5%. FTIR spectroscopy had a sensitivity of 72.1% and specificity of 99.0%, with a false negative rate of 27.9%.
As expected, while FTIR spectroscopy can quantify concentrations on a wide array of compounds, it can only do so above the detection limit. Using FTIR spectroscopy and immunoassay strips in combination has the potential to offset the limitations of each technology when used alone.
即时药物检测服务（个人可以检查其药物的含量和纯度）已经成为解决芬太尼危机的公共卫生干预措施；然而，针对这些技术，还没有与参考标准实验室技术进行严格评估。
在加拿大温哥华的两个监督注射场所实施了两种即时检测技术，芬太尼免疫检测条和傅里叶变换红外（FTIR）光谱。我们计算了两种检测方法相对于实验室参考标准的灵敏度、特异性和假阴性率。
在 2017 年 10 月至 2018 年期间，共送检 331 个样本进行确证检测。免疫检测条的灵敏度为 87.5%，特异性为 95.2%，假阴性率为 12.5%。FTIR 光谱的灵敏度为 72.1%，特异性为 99.0%，假阴性率为 27.9%。
正如预期的那样，虽然 FTIR 光谱可以定量分析广泛化合物的浓度，但只能在检测限以上进行。FTIR 光谱和免疫检测条联合使用有可能克服每种技术单独使用时的局限性。
