Hair analysis clinical applications

With growing attention to hair analysis for drugs of abuse and pharmaceutical drugs, a number of pharmacological, analytical, and technical problems became of interest, which have been focused in a Consensus Report and revised at the SOFT Conference 1992 in Cromwell, Hartford, CT. Main problems arose with the questions of external contamination, the routes of incorporation of drugs into hair, possible dose-response relationships, interpretation of results, and their application to forensic, clinical, and occupational cases. 

Until now, most studies have focused on forensic considerations. However, another exciting application of hair anlysis may be clinical investigations. The determination of plasma or urine concentrations of the monitored drugs is commonly used for that purpose however, such analyses may reflect only the exposure within a few days prior to obtaining the specimen. Hair analysis may represent an appropriate alternative, by providing information on the degree of exposure over a long time scale — weeks or months. 

Technically, testing of hair for drugs is no more difficult or challenging than testing in many other "alternative" matrices (for example, liver, bone, etc.). In fact, the application of analytical methods and instrumental approaches are in most cases quite similar, regardless of the initial matrix. At present, hair analysis is routinely used as a tool for detection of drug use in forensic science, traffic medicine, occupational medicine, and clinical toxicology. 

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