False positives results on “dip” style urinary drug tests.
(Failing drug tests for MDMA when drinking kava)
Hello kava lovers, today’s fact of the day comes from a rather recent article from the Journal of Analytical Toxicology. This article deals with kava’s interference with amphetamine type drug tests. If you’ve been a member of reddit r/kava or kavaforums for some time, inevitably you’ve seen reports of people testing positive for MDMA when drinking kava. It has been reported to only happen on “dip” style drug urinary analysis. We’ve not seen this issue in lab tests. We’ve been stumped and have been chocking it up to old, or faulty drug tests. As of recent, there is now clinical evidence supporting this. In this study three different individuals who drink kava on a regular basis tested positive. They used gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to analyze the three samples, and found no traces of amphetamine or amphetamine metabolites. They also tested the kava powder and found no amphetamines there either. Researchers spiked blank urine samples with kava extracts and all of them tested positive for amphetamine-type substances, confirming this issue.
Samples that caused false positives were found to contain Kavain and DHK. The researchers postulate that kava drinkers which consume kava on a regular basis, and in larger quantities were more likely to cause these results. They tested users of kava at social amounts (not daily drinking and lesser amounts consumed) and found they would test negative. The study concludes other factors may be relevant as well, including kava root source, means of preparation and concentration of kavain drink or paste, and individual variation in rate of metabolism [1].
This is the first study undertaken about this topic. In respect of this, we’ve created a form to report issues in this area if you’ve experienced them. If you or someone you may know has had a false positive drug test resulted from what they feel is kava, please visit the following page to submit your experience to help us better understand the reality of what’s going on.
https://kavapedia.com/survey/false-positives
Currently, and thanks to member information, we have found one specific drug test that gives false positives when drinking kava. Avoid the Easy@Home brand if you’re a regular kava drinker.
- Easy@Home 10 Panel Instant Drug Test Kits
[1] H Madhavaram, T Patel, C Kyle, Kavain Interference with Amphetamine Immunoassay, Journal of Analytical Toxicology, , bkaa178, https://doi.org/10.1093/jat/bkaa178
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