Several techniques are currently available to detect opiods in this biological fluid. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and gas chromatography - mass spectrometry (GC-MS) are the most frequently used. Nevertheless, these methods require a labor intensive sample preparation, extraction of the drugs, and in the case of GC/MS, derivatization.
Without any pretreatment, the presence of opiods in artificial urine was confirmed by characteristic resonance peaks in the NMR spectra. Data for few members of the opiod family and the limits of the technique are also presented.