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Other causes of failed PEth test for alcohol abuse?
Mental Health | Last Active: 4 days ago | Replies (447)Comment receiving replies
I had a thought today that I wanted to share with this group. When I recently had an ethanol blood test the lab tech has to use iodine to clean the draw site so as to now contaminate the blood sample. When they drew blood for PEth, the tech used an alcohol swab and the site and it wasn't fully dry before the needle was inserted. Could this feasibly cause a false positive test. If they are worried about it with an ethanol sample it seems reasonable that it could affect a test that directly involves blood and ethanol. Also, the tube used for collection was the same tube used for a previous ethanol sample that hemolyzed. When I asked the tech about this, he said that for some reason they have issues with this particular "grey top" vial, but they used the same grey top for the PEth sample.
It might be a long shot and I'm not 100% on how it is formed other than interaction of red blood cells and ethanol, could that reaction occur in a blood vial?
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Yorkie-
We had this initial concern, but stopped allowing the alcohol swabbing and yet still had false positive results (affirmed by negative tests from another place with samples given just minutes after the first one). It was NOT the alcohol swab, in my opinion, validated by a toxicologist who reiterated that the test is NOT checking for alcohol, but for phosphatidyl ethanol, an alleged byproduct of the body’s processing of heavy alcohol consumption. The ONLY false positives I EVER received were from Forensic DNA & Testing in Dallas. To date, the three other test facilities have, rightly so since I don’t drink at all anymore, resulted in negative. My common denominator was FDNA.