Smartphone based colorimetric point-of-care sensor for abused drugs: case of baclofen determination in urine

As a GABA-beta receptor agonist, the central muscle relaxant Baclofen (BAC) has a potential of abuse. Unfortunately, the sense of wellbeing and pleasure is obtained at very high BAC doses. This is associated with many life-threating or even fatal cases due to neurological and respiratory failures. Moreover, having narrow therapeutic index makes BAC a high-risk drug. This is potentiated in case of long-treatment regimen or off-label use in smoking and alcohol cessation protocols. Until now, there is no rapid diagnostic test available for BAC screening. Therefore; It is quite difficult to routinely monitor cases on BAC regimen. On the other hand, smartphone-based colorimetric point of care testing (POCT) is displacing conventional analytical approaches in the detection and assay of abused drugs as well as therapeutic drug monitoring. It offers on-site, rapid, easy, affordable and interpretable analysis. Incorporating smartphone as a portable device facilitates its application, especially in remote areas and low-income countries. For the first time, the current work presents a smartphone-based colorimetric POCT for BAC analysis in urine without interference from urine matrix. It depends on BAC reaction with naphthoquinone sulfonate (NQS) in highly alkaline aqueous medium. The developed color was captured in a customized photo box using smartphone camera. Then, intensity of the blue channel was measured by a software application "Color Analyzer". All parameters were optimized with respect to the colorimetric reaction, photographing and smartphone-based analysis. All parameters were successfully investigated according to FDA guidelines for bioanalytical method validation. Also, all POCT criteria were considered as per WHO requirements. This method could determine BAC, linearly, from 0.02 to 0.21 mmol L-1 in urine. Moreover, LLOQ was lower than the expected BAC therapeutic concentrations in urine. The proposed method proved high reliability and suitability to analyze BAC in urine. This strongly recommends its routine application in screening BAC abusers and BAC therapeutic monitoring.