Common Interferences in Drug Testing.

Interferences relating to laboratory toxicology testing refer to results which differ from their true value and are often encountered in the setting of a drug screen compared with confirmatory testing. Such interferences fall into two general categories; those that cause false positive results (when a drug screen is positive but confirmatory testing is negative) and those that cause false negative results (when a drug screen is negative when in reality the sample donor has ingested the tested substance). Such interferences can result from differences in laboratory testing methodology, reagent and analyte cross reactivity, limits of analyte detection, instrument resolution, reporting cutoff, sample processing, tissue type and sample adulteration among others. Awareness of the possible causes of such interferences are integral to proper laboratory result interpretation and patient management.