Opioids Narcotics -- Aspirin and MS-Contin Used As Explanation for Presumptive Positive Test for Heroin

[Nicomorphinist]

There was something in one of the North American newspapers which I am having a hard time tracking down in which a man who has to take a drugs test by saying that his positive test for heroin came from MS-Contin prescribed for pain and aspirin which he takes both for heart issues and arthritic pain. The argument was that the morphine and ASA were bio-transformed in low levels of smack and its metabolites. That would be interesting if this does happen and can be modulated to have clinically significant effects, both with diamorphine (smack) -- it would presumably turn niacin and morphine into nicomorphine, aspirin and hydromorphone into acetylmorphone, hydrocodone and aspirin into thebacon on and on . . .

 

[sekio]

sounds like grasping at straws to me. Aspirin is an ester not an anhydride so it isn't a reactive acylating agent.

Otherwise the esterase enzymes in your blood would be forming morphine esters from the fatty acids & Acetyl-CoA.