Analytical Detection of Prenatal Drug Exposure in Early Childhood in Prenatal, Perinatal and Postnatal Matrices

Currently, there are few validated and standardized tests for drug screening in pregnant women. In these as-says, maternal and fetal tissues are taken for screening, including maternal and fetal blood, meconium, hair, urine, pieces of placental material, and umbilical cord. Screening methods use different techniques including enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, spectrometry, gas chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with other detection techniques such as mass spectrometry. Here a new method is described that detects qualitative medication, legal drugs and illicit drugs in prenatal, perinatal and postnatal matrices in order to elucidate and explain various disorders in early childhood such as neonatal abstinence syndrome. Important in this work was the question of the range and sensitivity of methods to detect the sub-stances.