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DESIGNING AN UNDERGRADUATE FORENSIC CHEMISTRY EXPERIMENT ON THE LEVELS OF AMPHETAMINE IN URINE USING TWO DIFFERENT METHODS**

Abstract

Amphetamine is used to stimulate the central nervous system in patients with ADD/ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). This drug benefits those who need it, but according to FHE Health, it is widely abused by 11.1% of all college students. The aim of this procedure was to design a teaching lab on determining amphetamine in urine samples. For the first part of the experiment amphetamine was evaluated in synthetic urine samples through an Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA kit) that commercially available and is widely used in drug labs to qualitatively analyze whether amphetamine is present in a sample. This experiment determined whether the ELISA kit would be able to be used to find accurate quantitative results. The ELISA kit operates based on competition between the drug in the urine sample and the drug enzyme conjugate for antibody binding sites on the 96-well plate. The absorbance values were obtained with a microplate spectrophotometer. Once the values were obtained from the spectrophotometer, the data was analyzed to find the concentration of the drug in an unknown sample. Samples containing between 30.0 ng/mL and 300. ng/mL of amphetamine were analyzed using this method. The percent error for the calculated concentrations was 90.2% for the lowest concentration values, and around 13.9% for the high concentration, showing that the kit is unreliable at lower concentrations. The second part of the experiment involved the use of Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry to compare the two methods and for better quantification of the concentrations of amphetamine that are detectable in methanol. Amphetamine is extracted from urine and then evaluated using the GC/MS. Both of these experiments were designed to be used as lab classes for the forensic concentration program. The experimental procedures and results obtained using the two methods will be discussed in this poster.

Acknowledgements

Georgia College & State University Department of Chemistry, Physics, and Astronomy

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