Abstract
History & Objective : Illicit drug Use is a serious social problem in Kermanshah. Due to lack of enough information about prevalence of drug-abuse, present study was carried out to determine the prevalence and demoghraphic information about drug users in this city .
Materials & Methods : The subjects of this descriptive study included 4005 cases who were refferd to Emergency Units of Imam Khomini , Taleghani and Shaheed Fahmideh hospitals between 1998 and 1999. Demographic information of the subjects was collected through a questionnaire. To detect the presence of morphine in urine, urine samples of all cases were analyzed by screening and confrimatory methods.
For rapid identification , immunochromatography technique, was used as initial screening. Then the positive results were confirmed by Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) method.
Results : Application of screening techniques revealed 12.4% of the total population of the study (4005) were positive , while in confirmatory method only 4.7% of them were positive. 3454 of cases were male and 496 were female.
Discussion : Pervalence of drug abuse was 4.7 % in this study. Since the chances of interference of some drugs, such as codaine in rapid techniques is quite high; the positive results of screening methods are only presumptive. Hence to confirm the results
of rapid techniques for detection of opium in urine samples, it is recommended to use
confirmatory methods such as TLC.
of rapid techniques for detection of opium in urine samples, it is recommended to use
confirmatory methods such as TLC.
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© 2002, Journal of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences. This open-access article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0) International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which allows for the copying and redistribution of the material only for noncommercial purposes, provided that the original work is properly cited.