Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Human Saliva and Drug Detection

Saliva is the fluid which is produced in the mouth because of the three main salivary glands and the other minor salivary glands. Some of the people call the saliva as the oral fluid. But when strictly speaking oral fluid is nothing but the mixture of saliva and other metabolites. The mixed saliva and saliva are different. Simple saliva is free from other materials and is collected from the specific salivary gland.

There are several advantages of saliva. This saliva helps for the digestion of the food properly. The germs which are present in the mouth can be spit out the form of saliva. It keeps the mouth clean. Apart from the general uses, the saliva also helps us in detecting the diseases and mainly it helps in detecting the illegal drug usage. The different diseases which can be detected using the saliva are the cancer.

Now coming to saliva usage as the for detecting drug addiction, the saliva can detect the presence of the drug in the body just after the usage. Depending on the factors like physical size, degree of protein binding, lipophilicity of the drug, the transfer of the drug in the saliva may vary.

The usage of the drugs may vary the flow of the saliva. The drugs will change the salivation by changing the fluid and the blood flow gets affected in the glands. In general, on each day an adult produces the 1000mL of saliva. The rate of flow of saliva is different in different cases. While chewing, while sleeping, while spitting there will be a change.

By the use of saliva many drugs can be detected. About 8 different types of drugs can be detected using saliva. For example, the drugs which can be found in saliva are ethanol, methamphetamine, barbiturates, heroin etc., After the immediate consumption of the drug, the parent drug or the metabolites of the parent drug will remain in saliva, and this can be detected in the saliva drug test.

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