Urinary screening for drug abuse among secondary school students in assiut city

الملخص EN

Drug abuse among secondary school students is a major public concern all over the world.

Many countries estimated the prevalence of drug abuse among this group of students.

This work is a trial to study this prevalence in Assiut City.

The studied students in this work were one thousand students (750 males, 250 females).

Their ages ranged between 16 and 20 years old They were randomly chosen from 9 schools.

The study was carried out during the period from January to April 2001.

Urine screening had been done for detection of drug abuse.

Colour tests were used as preliminary tests and positive cases had been confirmed by thin layer chromatography.

In this study analysis had been done for nine drugs.

These drugs are valbam, tramadol, tussilar, codaphen, parkinol, rivotril, tranxene, mellaril and cannabis.

The total number of positive cases detected by colour tests (Marquis, Liebermann and Mandelin) and Beam was 31 and 19 cases respectively.

Regarding the distribution of different drugs among positive cases (49 cases) detected by thin layer chromatography: cannabis was the commonest drug of abuse (38.8%) followed by codaphen (32.7%), parkniol (20.4%) and tussilar (4.1%), while tramadol and valbam abuse was only encountered among (2%).

In conclusion The prevalence of drug abuse among students of some secondary schools in Assiut City was 5.2%, (4.68% and0.52% in males andfemales respectively).