A urine drug test, also known as a urine drug screen or a UDS, is a painless test. It analyzes your urine for the presence of certain illegal drugs and prescription medications. The labs check urine temperature to make sure it has not been altered.
The urine drug test usually screens for:
- Amphetamines
- methamphetamines
- Benzodiazepines
- barbiturates
- Marijuana
- Cocaine
- PCP
- methadone
- Opioids(narcotics)
A urine drug test can help a doctor detect potential substance abuse problems. After a drug test identifies drugs it will be identified in your test results. For conducting the test, the lab needs 30ml of urine. You can read this post on How Much Urine Is Needed For Drug Tests?.
In general chemical preservatives should be avoided for urinalysis. NCCLS recommends that urinalysis be performed within two hours of collection. If this is not possible, the urine specimen should be refrigerated as soon as possible after collection. The length of time a specimen can be held under refrigeration for adequate preservation has not been agreed upon different urine constituents remain unchanged under refrigeration for different lengths of time. Generally, the urinalysis should be completed within six to eight hours of collection. Decomposition of urine begins within 30 minutes; therefore, ideally, urine should be examined within this time.
Urine left at room temperature for more than two hours is usually considered unacceptable for examination. Refrigeration is generally adequate for constituents encountered in the routine urinalysis, with the exception of bilirubin and urobilinogen, which are labile to both heat and light.
There are urine preservation tubes commercially available for both urinalysis and culture that are said to preserve urine up to 72 hours without refrigeration. They are generally screw-on cap, leak-proof polypropylene tubes with conical bottoms and skirted freestanding bases, and each contains a preservative tablet such as mercuric oxide. The capacity of the tube is limited as little as 10mL.
Age of the collected urine is less than 2 hours, still it can stay longer if kept in the right kind of tubes which are made only for the purpose of urine of urine storage and extend its life to nearly 72 hours.