Know How to Read the Results From Multi-panel Drug Test Kits

Multi-panel drug test kits are becoming popular these days since they are found extremely useful at places like schools and offices for identifying the trends of drug abuse among students and employees respectively. The procedure for conducting the test is also so simple however, many people still feel a little confused in interpreting the test results. Following paragraph gives you a brief idea about how to read the results from a multi-panel drug test kit.

• Every drug test kit contains a result area from where we can read the results. This area contains two regions: The T and the C. T denotes Test region and C denotes Control region. A pink band or a colored band appears on any or both of these regions which indicates the test results.
• Also, for every drug test, there will be three possible results : Positive, Negative and Invalid. Let us see how they are defined.

Positive result: If a pink colored line appears in the control region(C), and if there is no indication in the test region(T), then the test is said to be positive. As there are different test zones for every specific drug in Multi-panel test kits, the results corresponds to the drug of that specific zone. Positive result shows that the sample contains drug metabolites and the person related to the sample has used that specified drug/drugs.

Negative result: If there are no drug metabolites found in the tested sample, then you will find rose-pink colored lines in both the control region(C) and the test region(T), indicating that the test is negative.

Invalid result: The appearance of pink band on Control region(C), is common in both the positive and negative results. In case, if you couldn't find line in the C region but can see line in the T region, the test is said to be invalid. Also, if there are no lines appearing on any of the regions, then also the test is invalid.

These are three possibilities and also note that there is nothing to do with the width and the brightness of the color band. Moreover, you have to read the results, exactly after 5 minutes after removing the strip from the sample and the results read before or after 5 minutes could lead to either false positives or false negatives.