Handbook of Drug Monitoring Methods - 9781588297808

This reference handbook for clinical laboratories was written by Dasgupta (pathology and laboratory medicine, U. of Texas-Houston Medical School) in order to bridge different analytical techniques in therapeutic drug monitoring, drugs of abuse testing, and alcohol testing, together with relevant theory, mechanisms, and scientific discussion. The 13 chapters on therapeutic drug monitoring discuss such issues as monitoring free drug concentration; analytical techniques for measuring concentrations of therapeutic drugs in biological fluids; the pre-analytical phase of drug testing; the effect of hemolysis, high bilirubin, lipemia, paraproteins, and system factors on therapeutic drug monitoring; interferences with measurement of anticonvulsants; pitfalls in measuring antidepressant drugs; immunosuppressive drugs; therapeutic monitoring in HIV/AIDS; pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine; interference of heterophilic and other antibodies in measurement of therapeutic drugs by immunoassays; and drug-herb and drug-food interactions and their impact on drug monitoring. The remaining nine papers discuss toxic element testing with clinical specimens; alcohol testing; urinary adulterants and drugs of abuse testing; hair, oral fluid, sweat, and meconium testing for drugs of abuse; abused and designer drugs and how they escape detection; interpretation of amphetamines screening and confirmation testing; clinical false-positive drug test results; and providing expert witness for alcohol and positive drugs of abuse test results. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)