The Relationship between Self-Reported and Urine Drug Test Obtained Substance Abuse among Adolescent Secondary School Students in Umuahia

Background: Self-reporting may under estimate or even over estimate prevalence of substance abuse, justifying the need for an objective estimate of the burden among adolescents. There has been varying reports in different settings on the relationship between self-reporting and urine drug testing in drug use surveys. Therefore, the relationship between these methods commonly used in estimating prevalence needs to be established in our environment. Objective: To determine the relationship between urine drug testing and self-reported substance abuse in Umuahia. Materials and methods: Cross sectional descriptive study of 400 adolescent students in urban and rural secondary schools in Umuahia. Substance use status was established by self-reporting and urine toxicology screen. Data obtained were analyzed using SPSS version 20. P values ≤ 0.05 were accepted as significant. Results: There was a weak relationship between self-reporting and urine drug testing in diagnosing cannabis, cocaine and opioid abuse among study participants (ρ=0.03, 0.01 and 0.03 respectively). There was also no agreement between the prevalence of cocaine, cannabis and opioid abuse by self-reporting and UDT (k= 0.011, 0.107 and 0.012) Conclusion: Drug use studies using an objective tool like urine drug testing gives a better estimate of drug use status of participants than self-reporting. However, the spectrum of currently abused drugs needs be established by self-reporting as UDT kits have limited number of materials in its panel and this may be unable to capture all substances of abuse among participants.