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Date: 2 August 2010
Two BU students will present their research findings at The International Association of Forensic Toxicologists Conference in Bonn, Germany.
Forensic toxicology students Eva Reichardt and Poppy McLaughlin have been invited to share their MSc findings at The International Association of Forensic Toxicologists Conference in August.
This yearly conference draws toxicologists from across the globe to share their research on drug monitoring, post-mortem toxicology, forensic chemistry, drug facilitated crimes and workplace drug testing.
Poppy McLaughlin will present her research paper on the use of alternative tissue samples to develop more efficient drug screening processes.
Poppy explained: “Usually tissue preparation for drug analysis is laborious but the developed methods mean that tissue samples can be screened within an hour, saving time and costs”. She added: “The greatest area of interest for me was to be involved with using instruments that are cutting edge and being able to develop them for other purposes”.
Poppy worked with clinical diagnostic company, Randox, and found that biochip immunoassay technology designed to test for drugs in blood could also be used with urine, eye fluid, liver and muscle tissue.
Eva will share her two areas of research. Firstly, her findings on the accuracy of using oral fluid in drug testing.
During this study Eva used two different types of testing device (the Orasure ‘Intercept’ and new Concateno ‘Certus’) and monitored how common foods, drinks and oral hygiene products affected results.
Eva explained: “Little research has been done into how different foods, beverages and hygiene products can affect the results. Now that tests are becoming more popular, especially for roadside or workplace drug testing, people are becoming more and more imaginative on how to alter these tests. Therefore it’s important for us to know which substances can alter drug tests.”
Eva’s second presentation will examine the purity of street ketamine collected from amnesty bins in London in 2007. She found that the majority of samples had a high purity percentage, meaning the urinary tract problems experienced by some users were likely to be caused by the ketamine itself, rather than other impurities.
Members of the police force, hospitals, coroners' laboratories, sports doping laboratories, pharmacologists, pharmacists and toxicologists will benefit from these presentations, which will take place at the conference between 29 August and 2 September 2010.
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