What is the difference between etg and ua

Security Check Enter the characters as they are shown in the image above. Ready to talk now? Contact our Sales Team today.

All rights reserved. All trademarks referenced are trademarks of either the Abbott group of companies or their respective owners. Result reports are available via our ToxAccess system. We look forward to a continued partnership with your agency. While most of these excretory products are detectable in urine for very short periods of time less than 24 hours , ethyl glucuronide EtG and ethyl sulfate EtS have longer half-lives and may be detectable in urine for up to 80 hours post-consumption at industry-standard cutoffs, depending on the dose taken prior to specimen collection.

Incidental exposure to ethanol from non-beverage sources may result in a positive drug test for EtG. Many common products purchased at grocery stores or pharmacies contain ethanol, which can cause a positive result in a drug test for EtG. Learn more about alcohol testing in this video. These products include over-the-counter, alcohol-based cold and flu medications e. Additionally, certain popular drinks sold in stores e. After a few drinks, EtG can be present in the urine up to 48 hours, and sometimes up to 72 or hours or longer if the drinking is heavier.

Number of Drinks? Not really. While higher amounts of EtG might indicate larger amounts of alcohol consumption, the exact number is influenced by several factors: the amount and when it was consumed. This inherent unreliability in testing for Ethyl Alcohol is why ten years ago I began advocating for EtG testing to validate a parent's abstinence.

It certainly beat the then current Ethyl Alcohol testing system with its tiny 4-hour window. Over the last ten years that EtG testing has been available, studies show that the 70 - hour window is incorrect. Still, a much larger window for detection than 4 hours or less.

Many family law professionals still operate on the notion of a 70 - hour testing period. Failure of family law to get up to speed with the current understanding of EtG testing is alarming with consequences too numerous to outline in this blog. When we began using EtG testing the big concern was false positive results. Because of the concerns the EtG cut off level was raised to ng.

Today the big concern is false negative results. From personal anecdotes and professional experience I conclude that EtG false positive are occurring more often than not. Further exacerbating the problem, research isn't consistently pointing to false negatives as being problematic see SAMHSA opinion below.

Advisories released by SAMHSA, one in and another in , make it clear that a positive EtG test is inconclusive in determining consumption of alcohol meaning that an EtG is capable of producing a false positive reading. The advisory goes on to state that a negative EtG is convincing enough proof that an individual has NOT recently imbibed - at least for the 24 - 48 hours before testing occurred.

Take note of those numbers, 24 - 48 hours, not 70 - 80 hours. The advisories also provided guidance on what a positive result may indicate. I have only included the - 1, ng here, as this is the range typically used by family law. It's clear from the latter guidelines that the EtG is useful in identifying heavy alcohol abuse, but not a catch all test. Participants were categorized into one of the four groups: tee-totallers consuming 0 units a week , lower-risk drinkers units a week , increasing-risk drinkers' consuming units a week and high-risk drinkers over 50 units a week.

The results showed that EtG was detected in 29 out of hair samples. EtG sensitivity was highest for high-risk drinkers consuming more than 50 units a week.