‘Harmless’ drug tests positive in urine drug test, study warns

Medical research shows that a Medicine Apparently ‘harmless’, which has been approved for marketing in both the United States and Europe, is behind false positives in urine tests to detect drugs and alcohol.

Published in a letter to the editor in New England Journal of MedicineThis fascinating discovery was made at the Michael J. Crescenz was discovered by a patient at the Cape Veterans Affairs Medical Center, a facility that provides mental health care services. veteran army soldier United States of america.

Retired soldier gave this information to his doctor had failed several drug tests is mandatory as part of your probation obligation upon giving positive for alcohol, despite being sober for 10 months. Seeing this incident, the Centre’s team contacted its laboratory, which had also analyzed urine samples of the same patient during the same period.

The team of doctors led by Dr. Aaron Schwartz No signs of alcohol found In the patient’s urine despite positive results. What they discovered was glucosuria or the presence of glucose in the urine. For this reason, they suspected that the false positives occurred because the patient was taking a drug called empagliflozin, It is a drug that is an SGLT2 inhibitor, prescribed to lower blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes.

The drug ‘produces alcohol’ in the sample

Seeing these signs, Dr. Schwartz contacted the probation office and asked How did they collect urine samples? Collected from people who were on parole. They found that all urine samples were stored at room temperature, but never for more than 24 hours.

To test their suspicion that empagliflozin was behind the false positives, the doctor and his team collected more urine samples and stored some on a shelf and others in a refrigerator for 24 hours. Analysis of samples showed no signs of alcohol in refrigerated samples False positives in everything stored at room temperature,

Schwartz explains that the drug caused both sugar levels and bacteria levels in the urine to increase. The bacteria had to work with the sugar and Alcohol is produced in the same way as wine by fermentation,

The doctor concludes in his article that municipal officials should be aware of the possible medical causes of false positives in breathalyzer tests to avoid causing false positives in people who have not violated their probation.