Test may help identify suicide risk

Last Modified: 26 Mar 2008
Source: PA News

A single sample of hair could help scientists identify if young people using drugs are more prone to suicide and self-harm.

Pioneering technology developed by the University of Ulster and the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain will enable researchers to carry out a complete chemical breakdown of a person's strand of hair to reveal what drugs they have taken in the past six months.

Researchers think this could lead to an important breakthrough to help to identify people at risk from suicide and self-harm by examining if prescribed anti-depressants and illegal drug use are linked.

Professor Franklin Smyth, from the Biomedical Research Institute at the University of Ulster, who is supervising the research, explained: "If drugs have been taken, even going back to a period of up to six months, it is still possible to detect them by analysis of the hair sample using our state-of-the-art instrumentation at Ulster.

"Drugs are chemically more stable in hair matrices compared to either blood or urine."

The new technology uses the latest advances in liquid chromatography, a technique to separate chemicals into different molecules so that the various drugs can be separately identified.

According to Professor Smyth, the research was developed specifically to help identify people at risk from suicide and self-harm in Northern Ireland.

He said: "In Northern Ireland, there are six anti-depressants prescribed by doctors and we have a high rate of suicide amongst young people here, and we want to see if there is any correlation between legitimately prescribed drugs and anything that has been used in a night club."

Now that scientists at the University of Ulster have developed the appropriate analytical technology, the next stage will be to conduct controlled field trials.

Professor Smyth said: "If we can get regulatory approval from relevant councils to carry out this work, which involves consulting with GPs and accessing funding, then it could be of significant beneficial use to society - especially if a correlation can help to identify people at risk from suicide and self-harm."

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