Breaking the paradigm of nerve-racking blood draw and block urine sample , a new drug testing platform first developed by chemists at the University of East Anglia ( UEA ) can detect the use of four major drug classes in just 10 arcminute , using nothing more than a fingermark .
base upon more than 10 year of research , the Intelligent Fingerprinting Drug Screening System uses antibodies to analyze the lather transpose in a individual fingerprint for the presence of cocain , amphetamines , marijuana , and opiate . sound Fingerprinting founder David Russell , an emeritus professor at UAE , created the platform in the hopes of providing rapid and reliable substance use information on both living and dead subjects , allowing people undergoing testing to defer non - invasive and dignified samples and help coroners point their fourth dimension - sensitive cause - of - death investigations . And as demonstrated by a late cowcatcher subject field publish in theJournal of Analytical Toxicology , the innovative method exploit with accuracies comparable to the gold standard of combined liquid chromatography ( LC ) and mass spectrometry ( MS ) of unstable samples . In material - world experiments pose up to test the examination , Russell and his colleagues teamed up with three UK coroner to perform fingermark depth psychology on 75 indiscriminately selected deceased individuals . The presence or absence of drug in each person ’s system was then confirm using LC - MS analysis of a 2d fingerprint sample as well as LC - MS analyses of bloodline and urine . Using the LC - MS fingerprint results as a measure , the Intelligent Fingerprinting arrangement achieved an accuracy of 98.7 percent for THC , 94.7 percent for cocaine ( through the detection of its metabolite BZE ) , 96 percent for opiates ( catching of morphine ) , and 93.3 per centum for amphetamine . The accuracy when compare to traditional line test were 96 , 92 , 88 , and 97 percent , respectively .
" This significant research demonstrates how there is sufficient sweat present in a subject ’s fingerprint , disregardless of whether the person is awake or dead , to enable our fingertip - base drug screening system to detect the presence of four major drugs of contumely at the same clip , " co - author Dr Paul Yates read in astatement .
The two - part Intelligent Fingerprinting organization – consisting of disposable print - hoard magazine and a portable cartridge reading material machine – identifies pre - specified chemical with a technique called a fluorescence - establish lateral stream contender seek . The part of each cartridge where fingertip effort is imprinted is a cellulose - base newspaper publisher strip with four pre - applied stripes of protein - bind versions of each drug chemical compound , plus a fifth streak of a protein - leap control agent . After a print is applied , the cartridge is load into the car , whereupon fluorescently - tagged antibody specific to each drug are wash over the drug - protein stripes . A sampling with no drug present will show the maximal amount of fluorescence because the antibody will have hold to the drug - protein grade insignia during the wash .
But if one or more drugs are present in the effort , the antibody will preferentially hold to these free drug speck alternatively of to the protein - drug complex speck in the bar , which lead to a less intense fluorescent fixture signal , as measured by the lector . The photographic print collection phase was find to require about five seconds , while the analysis form is complete after 10 proceedings .
According to the authors , the platform is now in regular use in some coroner ’s morgue and is being adopted by rehabilitation centers , workplaces , and gamy school . to boot , they revealed that proof - of - concept discipline are presently being perform for airport screening and for consumption within prisons and probation services .
