The Study of Ranitidine Interference With Morphine Detection Test by Thin-Layer Chromatography

Drug abuse is a global and critical problem. One of the most frequent practices done in order to detect the drugs of abuse is Urine Drug Screen. However, for changing the drug test results, adulterants and urine substitutes are being designed. As the referring people’s background has shown, ranitidine is one of the interfering drugs in morphine detection test. Therefore, in the present study, the interference of ranitidine in morphine detection test will be studied. Ten healthy volunteers who had not used any kind of drug for 72 hours before the test were recruited into the study. First, 2 doses of ranitidine (150 and 300 mg) were administered to the subjects orally and 100-mL urine samples were collected from them before and after taking ranitidine. The second urine sample was collected at 6-8 am. Ten micrograms morphine was added to both urine samples of each individual. The urine samples were tested using thin-layer chromatography (TLC) technique. The experiment was repeated after 1 week using ranitidine 300 mg. The TLC test was carried out on 40 urine samples. Twenty samples were tested before and, the rest, after ranitidine consumption. The TLC test results were positive before ranitidine consumption but negative for 18 samples and positive for two samples after taking ranitidine. Ranitidine may change the urine morphine screening test results via TLC method and induce a false negative result.