Reliability of Urine Strip Test For Confirmation of Methadone Poisoning in Children

Methadone is a drug with biologic effects similar to morphine which acts via interacting with major classes of receptors κand µ. It has a half-life of 25 to 50 hours. Ingestion of this substance causes serious symptoms such as bradycardia, apnea, decreased level of consciousness, and death. Rapid diagnosis and treatment is life-saving. The methadone urine test is an easy to perform test which could detect the substance rapidly. This study was conducted to determine the reliability of the positive methadone urine test in the first and second days of poisoning in children below the age of 13 who have been poisoned with it.
A total of 50 children below 13 years of age were enrolled in the study from April 2013 to April 2014. They were referred to Loghman Hakim Hospital with a history of incidental methadone ingestion and clinical symptoms congruent with methadone poisoning such as apnea, drowsiness, decreased level of consciousness, and bradycardia and miosis. Methadone urine strip test was performed on the first and second days. Five parameters (age, gender, dose of ingested methadone, urine SG, and urine pH) were tested and recorded for each patient.
This test is an accruable test for the detection of methadone (P value According to the results of this study, the methadone urine drug screen test has high accuracy for detection of methadone in the urine. In addition, if the initial test result is negative in the first 24 hours, we recommend that the test should be repeated 24 hours after the ingestion; thus, two negative results in the first 48 hours of ingestion can rule out methadone poisoning by a probability of 98.5%.