urine-drug-test

The urine drug test provides a way for the administration of something called an immunochromatographic urinary assay. The test, or assay, with that long name has, until fairly recently, always been done within the confines of the laboratory. Now, however, science has made it possible to do the same test in the privacy of a drug-user’s home. Special proteins called antibodies are made to adhere to a section of each test strip. Those proteins have the ability to bind to selected drugs. By joining an antibody to a chromatographic chemical agent, the strip maker has related the show of color and the presence of a drug. The strip maker has thus created a urine drug test that can provide results outside of the laboratory setting.

Before someone takes a urine drug test, that test subject might want to become familiar with the various factors that can have a bearing on the test results. It’s common knowledge that not every person who collects a sample for a self-administered drug test has one standard set of physical characteristics. For that reason, it should come as no surprise that not every body has the same ability to move a particular drug out of the system.

The ability of a person’s body to move a chemical, such as a drug, through the circulatory system and into the excretory system describes that individual’s metabolism. When a chemical moves quickly through the system, i.e. when it moves rapidly into the excretory system, then the body is said to have a high metabolic rate. When the same chemical moves slowly through the body system, then that body is said to have a low metabolic rate.

A person’s metabolic rate can have a major influence on the results of a urine drug test. A body’s metabolism tends to slow with time. Hence an older individual would be expected to retain a drug longer than a younger individual. Of course, even an expected result could vary from what had been predicted, depending on other significant factors. For example, a large body mass would tend to produce a marked increase in the metabolic rate. Hence the metabolism of a smaller and younger person could equal that of a larger and older person.

The person who plans to use a urine drug test might plan to be surprised at the results, especially if the test has been called-on to detect a particular drug for the first time. The metabolism of some drugs can vary, according to the amount of fat through which the drug must pass. Two drugs, THC, which is found in marijuana, and PCP both accumulate within body fat. Later those drugs leak from the fat into the body system, and could be detected in a urine drug test. 

Someone who has taken a drug for a long time might manage to metabolize a drug before the administration of a urine drug test. Tolerance for a drug increases a person’s ability to metabolize that drug. If, however, one becomes ill from taking a drug, then that ill health could lead to a marked slowing in the rate at which the drug could move through the system.

All of those factors influence the appearance of each test strip, after that test strip has been dipped into a sample of urine. And those do not represent the only factors that can influence the test results. Stress, exercise, the quantity of the drug and the quality of the drug all impact the results of the urine drug test.