Home based drug testing kits are the easy-to-use kits which are particularly useful for periodic monitoring without getting into the trouble of sending samples to labs and receiving reports. There are several such kits available in the market that facilitates immediate detection of various drugs, steroids, heavy metals, biomarkers etc. in the blood. On the basis of type of sample used and type of substance tested for, many variants of these kits have evolved and most of them work either on the principles of antigen-antibody interactions or simple calorimetric reactions. Various compound specific antibodies or substrates are developed which are either labeled with various dyes or which react to produce colored-reaction products for detection on the basis of simple color change. These labeled antibodies or substrates are than coated onto strips which are part of these kits. When test sample is applied onto these strips, presence of drug/steroid/heavy metal or the biomarker in the sample induces antibody-antigen interactions or calorimetric reactions followed by a color change which indicates the presence of the component tested for. Some kits use swabs, instead of strips, that change their color if the suspected compound is present in the sample. In these kits, rough quantitative approximation can be made on the basis of intensity of color or time taken to develop the color.
DNA & Genetics
DNA & Paternity
