Amphetamines and Ecstasy (MDMA): A Comprehensive Study Using Siemens and Thermo Fisher Immunoassays Together with LC-MS/MS Method

Drugs of Abuse (DOA) screening methods are regularly used in pathology laboratories to screen and monitor drugs. We conducted two comprehensive separate studies to evaluate amphetamines and ecstasy (MDMA) using Thermo Fisher and Siemens Immunoassay against LC-MS/ MS method. These studies aimed to compare the two methods thoroughly using a large number of patients, a total of 34,780 patients, to evaluate the clinical impact on reporting either false positive or false negative results using these methods. We reviewed 547 articles using wider search parameters in PubMed where 68 articles were related to immunoassays. Separate studies were conducted to examine cross-reactivity as mentioned in the Discussion section in this article. This study identified that Thermo Fisher and Siemens immunoassays methods had no false-negative results. Siemens EMIT II Immunoassay gave 1.7 % false-positive results and Thermo Fisher CEDIA immunoassay gave 1.5 % false-positive results.

Keywords: Amphetamines; Ecstasy; MDMA; Immunoassays; Drugs of Abuse

Abbreviations:CEDIA: Cloned Enzyme Donor Immunoassay, DOA: Drugs of Abuse, DRI: Diagnostic Reagents Inc, ELISA: Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay, EMIT: Enzyme-Multiplied Immunoassay Technique, MDMA: 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine