Screening of therapeutical drugs and substances of abuse in human body fluids by near-IR laser Raman spectroscopy

Near infrared Raman spectroscopy has been successfully used to quantitatively analyze the ethanol, acetaminophen and codeine in water solution and urine samples. A partial least squares method was used to measure the analyte concentrations of interest. Two other methods incorporating the intrinsic spectrum of the analyte of interest into the calibration were examined to improve the accuracy of predicted concentration of desired species. It was found that the methods using intrinsic spectrum of the analyte of interest always achieved the better accuracy comparing with commonly used partial least squares technique. The results have demonstrated the potential of near infrared Raman technology in screening of therapeutic drugs and substances of abuse in human body fluids.