What's the main difference between a urinalysis strip and a test strip?

[Joey]

Title.

Would a regular strip used for urinalysis work on lieu of a test strip? I'm sure there's a reason why the two products are seperate, but how so and why?

 

[gibberish-noise]

Test strips detect the actual drug itself (eg cocaine aka benzoylmethyl ecgonine), whereas urinalysis detects secondary and tertiary metabolites your body excretes as byproducts of breaking down the substances in question (eg benzoylecgonine, ecgonine methyl ester)

As far as I'm aware, they are not interchangeable. Edit: mea culpa, learned something new from this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6368048/

Turns out, some metabolites are also other drugs (eg heroin->morphine, meth->amphetamine, diazepam->oxazepam, oxy/hydrocodone->oxy/hydromorphone), which makes things more confusing. But if you wanted to test your product for the presence of the second drug, theoretically it should work.

Why would you prefer to use urinalysis strips when regular test strips are available?

 

[Joey]

Test strips detect the actual drug itself (eg cocaine aka benzoylmethyl ecgonine), whereas urinalysis detects secondary and tertiary metabolites your body excretes as byproducts of breaking down the substances in question (eg benzoylecgonine, ecgonine methyl ester)

As far as I'm aware, they are not interchangeable. Edit: mea culpa, learned something new from this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6368048/

Turns out, some metabolites are also other drugs (eg heroin->morphine, meth->amphetamine, diazepam->oxazepam, oxy/hydrocodone->oxy/hydromorphone), which makes things more confusing. But if you wanted to test your product for the presence of the second drug, theoretically it should work.

Why would you prefer to use urinalysis strips when regular test strips are available?

I wouldn’t, it was a question someone asked me in my real life.