Evaluation of a rapid immunoenzymatic screening kit (SAMElife™) for drugs of abuse detection in hair

The performance of the SAMElife™ rapid hair screening kit was evaluated for the detection of drugs of abuse in 31 anonymized hair samples, encompassing 217 analyses for morphine, cocaine, amphetamines, buprenorphine, oxycodone, fentanyl, and methadone. Screening results were compared with confirmatory gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) analyses. The kit demonstrated high specificity (100%) and good sensitivity (81.8%) for basic drugs, with four false negatives observed for cocaine, while no false positives were recorded. Detection of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) was unreliable, yielding uniformly positive results regardless of confirmatory analysis. The automated workflow, requiring only hair cutting and no prior decontamination, provides a rapid and practical approach for preliminary screening in routine toxicology laboratories. Despite limitations in THC detection and the small number of positive samples for some analytes, the SAMElife™ kit offers a reliable tool to reduce the number of samples requiring confirmatory analysis. Further evaluation on larger populations and optimization of the THC assay are recommended.