The duration time of urine morphine detection in heroin addicts by radioimmunoassay.

ABSTRACT

Heroin is one of the most seriously abused drugs and its consumption is illegal. Therefore, the detection of the drug in addicts has to be highly accurate and reliable. Morphine detection in urine is the most common method to confirm consumption. Several methods of morphine detection in urine are described such as Latex Agglutination Inhibition (LAI), Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC), Radioimmunoassay (RIA), High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrophotometry (GC/MS). In this study, we performed Radioimmunoassay (RIA) because it is rapid and cheap. Sixty-three male heroin addicts, average age 32 years, with an average time of heroin administration of about 3 years were studied. They used on average Q.635 grams of heroin per day. The time of detection in the urine after the last heroin administration to the first urine testing was about 8.5 hours, over 3-4 days. The amount of morphine in the urine was 17,897.9 ng/ml. Nevertheless, we found that morphine could be detected in the urine every day for seven days. The decreasing rate of daily morphine detection in the urine was 88.4, 74.2, 64.2, 57.1, 63.3 and 44.8 per cent. But there was no significant difference in the route of administration.