Citation

Busardò FP, Pichini S, Pellegrini M, Montana A, Faro AFL, Zaami S, Graziano S. Curr. Neuropharmacol. 2018; 16(1): e155220.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Bentham Science Publishers)

DOI

10.2174/1570159X15666170828162057

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Licit and illicit drugs affecting the central nervous system have the potential to impair driving ability. The effects of drugs on driving performance should be checked with drug concentration in the brain and at the same time with the evaluation of both the behavioural and neurophysiological effects. The best accessible indicator of this information is the concentration of the drug and/or metabolites in blood and, to a certain extent, oral fluid. Neurocognitive tasks under the influence of drugs should be also monitored. Up to 2010, no epidemiological studies were available on this matter and International scientists suggested that even minimal amounts of parent drugs in blood and oral fluid could affect driving impairment. More recently, epidemiological data, systematic reviews and meta-analysis on drugged drivers allowed the suggestion of impairment concentration limits for the most common illicit drugs. These values were obtained comparing driving disability induced by psychotropic drugs with that of established blood alcohol limits. Differently from ethyl alcohol where both detection methods and concentration limits have been well established even with inhomogeneity of ranges within different countries, in case of drugs of abuse no official cut-offs have yet been established, nor any standardized analytical protocols. Furthermore, few studies systematically evaluated cognitive ability and performance when drugged. In this scenario, we sought to review international studies on correlation between blood and oral fluid drug concentrations, neurological correlates and cognitive impairment in driving under the influence of drugs (DUID).

Keywords: Cannabis impaired driving

Language: en

Keywords

blood; Cognitive impairment; cut-off.  ; Driving under the influence of drugs (DUID); oral fluid