Recent Studies

Novel highly sensitive method to detect cannabis use from saliva samples was developed at Prof. Aviv Amirav research group

Fast saliva analysis by GC–MS with Cold EI and Open Probe Fast GC–MS with Cold EI for the detection of cannabis usage

Oneg Elkabets, Benny Neumark and Aviv Amirav

Saliva stands out as a convenient body fluid for detecting recent cannabis use by drivers. We developed a method in which saliva samples are collected with ease from donors' tongues using a thin glass rod. The saliva sample is analyzed using a unique device developed by our research group named Chromatoprobe in combination with Gas Chromatography–Mass spectrometry with Cold Electron Ionization (Cold EI). Our novel method not only efficiently detects cannabis use with high sensitivity but also enables the clear differentiation between the isomers delta 9-THC (recreational cannabis smoking) and cannabinol (CBD) (medical cannabis). The ability to distinguish between delta 9-THC and CBD adds to the method's efficacy of detecting illegal cannabis smoking. The analysis takes only 10 minutes and can be done even in real-time (<1min) using additional development at our research group called OpenProbe Fast GC-MS with Cold EI. Below are the steps of saliva sampling, injection with ChromatoProbe and analysis start.