Fentanyl exam strips could lead to fake clarity of security, Health Canada warns

Fentanyl exam strips don’t always detect a participation of a lethal opioid and could give drug users a fake clarity of security, Health Canada is warning. 

In an advisory released Wednesday, a dialect pronounced a drug investigate use did a “preliminary study” to review “a fentanyl exam frame product” used in communities opposite a possess some-more worldly laboratory tests.  

Demand for commercially constructed exam strips has boomed as recreational drug users and harm-reduction workers try to stop a rising series of deaths due to travel drugs laced with fentanyl. 

• Demand for fentanyl exam strips booms — though exam is not widely available

The Health Canada investigate compared fentanyl strip exam results with its professional laboratory exam results on 70 samples of drugs. Most of a samples “contained chemically identical drugs (fentanyl and analogues with identical chemical profiles, such as carfentanil),” department spokesman Eric Morrissette told CBC News in an email Wednesday evening. 

In 63 of the samples, the exam strips “accurately identified that opioids were present,” he said. 

But in 3 samples, a fentanyl test strips gave fake negatives, indicating no opioids were present, when a lab tests indicated they were. 

The strips showed fake positives for opioids in dual cases, and gave “invalid results” in dual others. 

• Health officials advise of stipulations to newly accessible opioid exam strips

Although Morrissette cautioned that a formula are “very preliminary” and that a representation distance was really small, he pronounced a fact that “there is a probability for fake negatives in a tiny series of instances … suggests some-more investigate on this emanate is needed.” 

The risk of a fake disastrous is quite concerning, since it could “lead to a fake clarity of confidence that might outcome in overdose or death,” Health Canada’s advisory said.

“This is quite loyal for people who might select to use drugs alone or but visiting a supervised [drug] expenditure site where puncture assistance is immediately available.”

Health Canada is ‘urging Canadians to yield all bootleg drugs as potentially contaminated,’ and to take precautions if regulating drugs. (CBC)

The dialect “is propelling Canadians to yield all bootleg drugs as potentially contaminated,” and to take precautions if regulating drugs, including never regulating them alone, going to a supervised expenditure site whenever possible, and ensuring naloxone (a drug used to retreat overdoses) is available.    

In a subsequent proviso of assessing fentanyl test strips, Health Canada skeleton to use them with a greater variety and series of drug samples. 

Morrissette was incompetent to immediately provide a code name of a fentanyl test strip product that was studied, or mention what kind of drugs were tested. 

• 2,000% arise in travel drug samples contrast certain for fentanyl

But regardless of a brand, “Health Canada has not protected any drug exam strips as medical inclination dictated for drug-checking of bootleg drug samples before consumption,” Morrisette said. 

However, provincial and territorial health ministries have a management to discharge fentanyl test strips as a harm-reduction measure. 

In British Columbia, clients during the supervised expenditure site Insite have been authorised to use a strips to exam their drugs.  Drug users are not available to use them off-site in private homes or in a community. The Ontario government also announced progressing in a tumble that it would yield fentanyl testing strips “at all stream supervised injection services and pop-up sites and will be evaluated for serve distribution.”

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/fentanyl-test-strips-false-negatives-health-canada-1.4447392?cmp=rss