PARENTS URGED TO LEAVE TEEN DRUG TESTING TO PROS

NEW YORK ( Reuters Health ) - Parents who suspect their child is using drugs can easily get their hands on an array of home drug tests, but experts say the do-it-yourself route is the wrong one.

In a study of eight Internet sites selling home drug-testing kits, researchers found that companies typically glossed over the technical difficulty of performing the tests, as well as the potential harm a home drug-screening effort could do to the parent-child relationship.

Overall, the researchers say, the sites were short on detail when it came to explaining how to collect usable test samples, and several made no mention of the risk of false-positive or false-negative results.

Dr.  Sharon Levy and her colleagues at Children's Hospital Boston report the findings in the journal Pediatrics.

Levy, a specialist in adolescent substance abuse, advised that parents forego home tests and instead get professional help if they think their child is using drugs.

"We're not telling parents to ignore the problem of drug use," she told Reuters Health.  However, she said, drug testing is "just too complicated" for parents to try to handle themselves.

And the Web sites in this study did not fully address these challenges, according to Levy and her colleagues.

Some of the obstacles include the potential for "cross-reacting" chemicals found in food and medication to yield false-positive results.  For example, certain cold medicines, and even high doses of caffeine, may cause kids to test positive for amphetamines.

On the other hand, Levy's team notes, testing could give false-negative results if parents don't choose the correct test, don't perform it in the necessary window of time after drug use, or if teens know how to "beat" the test -- by diluting their urine with water, for example.

"Get help from a professional," Levy said.

That advice is in line with an American Academy of Pediatrics ( AAP ) recommendation that calls for sending children suspected of abusing drugs for a professional evaluation, rather than using widespread drug screening in schools.  Levy said that, based on the new findings, the AAP is revising that policy statement to discourage home drug testing as well.

Home drug-testing products have been approved for use in the U.S.  since 1997.  By 1998, Levy's team notes, more than 200 such products had been approved.

Among those sold by the Web sites in their study, some allowed parents to test for alcohol on the spot via breath or saliva.  A number of urine tests - -- some "instant," others needing to be mailed to a lab -- -were marketed for detecting drugs such as cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana.

The tests sold for anywhere from $2.75 for a single alcohol test to $89 for a multi-drug test kit requiring hair and urine samples.

Most of the sites gave "conflicting or incomplete information" about which drugs each test could detect, Levy and her colleagues report.  Some sites claimed to have a specific test for the club drug ecstasy, even though no such test existed at the time of the study, the researchers point out.

Levy said that parents who suspect drug abuse should be up-front and honest with their children, and tell them that they want them to speak with a doctor.  She noted that in her practice, even if a teenager refuses to seek help, parents are still urged to come in for advice.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, April 2004.